How to remove metadata from a PDF
- Add one or more PDFs. Everything is read on your device.
- Look at the panel that appears. It lists exactly what each file is carrying — author, title, the software that wrote it, and when.
- Press Remove metadata. Every listed property is cleared, and the XMP block that quietly repeats them is deleted.
- Press Save for the cleaned copy. The panel re-reads the originals, so you can compare what was there against what you asked to remove.
About this tool
Almost every PDF carries a set of properties that nobody deliberately typed. The name of the account logged into the machine that produced it. The software and version. The minute the file was created, and the minute it was last saved. Word, Acrobat, Google Docs, LibreOffice and most scanners all fill these in silently, and most people never look at them.
They matter more often than you would think. A CV goes out under one name and its Author field says another. A tender submitted by one consultancy names a different one as Creator, because the template was reused. An anonymous document names the machine it was written on. A file dated months before the event it describes. None of this is exotic — it is a right-click away in any PDF reader.
This tool shows you the properties before it removes them, which is the part most metadata strippers skip. "Metadata removed" is a claim; a list of what was found is evidence, and it is also how you discover that the file was carrying something you would not have guessed.
Two details are handled that a naive strip misses. The information dictionary is only half the story — many PDFs also embed an XMP packet, an XML block that repeats the same fields and sometimes more, and clearing one while leaving the other achieves very little. That block is deleted too. And the timestamps are not set to today, which would leak the moment you cleaned the file; they are pinned to a value that is obviously not a real authoring time.
What this does not touch is the visible content. Text on the page stays on the page. If you need something removed from the page itself, that is redaction rather than metadata, and Redact PDF is the tool for it.
Frequently asked questions
- What exactly is removed?
- Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, Creator and Producer, the creation and modification dates, and the embedded XMP metadata block if the file has one. The page content is untouched.
- Will I be able to see what was there first?
- Yes — that is the point. The panel lists every property found in each file before you remove anything, and re-reads the originals afterwards so you can compare.
- Does this remove the author of comments and annotations?
- No. Names attached to comments and form fields live in the page objects rather than in the document properties. Flatten PDF removes annotations and comments entirely, which does remove the names with them.
- Why are the dates set to 1970 rather than blank?
- The PDF information dictionary has no way to express "no date". Leaving today's date would quietly record when the file was cleaned, so both dates are pinned to a value that is plainly not a real authoring time.
- Is the file uploaded?
- No. It is read and rewritten in your browser. Nothing about this operation involves a network request.