Remove PDF metadata
The version you send should not say who wrote it, on what, or when you last touched it at 2am.
Drag PDFs in, paste, or click to choose
A whole folder works too · Ctrl/Cmd+V pastes · on phone this opens your photo library · up to 100 MB per file
Add a PDF and everything it is carrying gets listed here first. Nothing is deleted until you press the button, and nothing is uploaded at any point.
Why you would remove PDF metadata before sending a file
The properties panel of a PDF you did not make is often more informative than the document. The author field frequently carries a real name or a corporate account, the producer names the software and sometimes its version, and the modification timestamp records exactly when the file was last touched. Documents that started life as a template carry the original author rather than whoever last edited it, which is how a supposedly fresh proposal turns out to have been someone else's. None of this is visible when you read the file, which is precisely why it survives to the recipient. This tool lists each of those values, so you can see what would have gone out, and then removes them by rebuilding the document without them.
Not taking our word for it is the point: the code that does this is on GitHub, tests included.
What it cannot do
- Only the PDF's own metadata is affected. An embedded photograph keeps its EXIF and any GPS tag it arrived with.
- Names and letterheads printed on the pages are content and stay put. This changes what is hidden in the file, not what is written in the document.
- Comments keep their text; only the record of who wrote each one and when is removed.
- Encrypted documents are returned untouched.
Questions people actually ask
- What does a PDF reveal about me if I do not remove the metadata?
- Typically the account name of whoever created it, the application and often its version, and the creation and modification timestamps. Documents built from a template can also carry the original author rather than you. Comments additionally record who made each one.
- Is removing PDF metadata the same as redacting a document?
- No, and confusing the two is dangerous. This removes information stored about the file. Redaction removes information written in the file, and needs the text and images themselves altered. A document with a name in its first paragraph still has that name after this tool runs.
- Can the recipient tell that the metadata was removed?
- Nothing is added that says so — no marker, no producer string naming this tool. But an empty properties panel is itself unusual, since almost every document carries at least a producer, so someone who goes looking may notice the absence. There is no way around that short of writing false values in, which this deliberately does not do.
- Should I remove metadata from every PDF I send?
- Not automatically. Timestamps and authorship are genuinely useful inside a team, and stripping them from a shared working document loses real information. The case for removing them is when a file crosses a boundary — to a client, a counterparty, a public site — where whoever receives it has no business knowing which account produced it or at what hour.
