How to use it
- Add a PDF. Its title, author, subject, keywords, creator and producer fill the form, with the creation and modification dates shown below.
- To edit, change the fields and click Save metadata.
- To remove everything, click Strip all metadata.
- Download the new copy.
What metadata can reveal
PDF properties are invisible when you read the document but visible to anyone who opens File → Properties, and to search engines that index PDFs. Common surprises:
- Author set to the full name or network login of whoever created the original Word document, sometimes years ago, sometimes at another company.
- Title left over from a template or an earlier draft ("Copy of Copy of Final v3 – DO NOT SEND").
- Creator and producer naming the software and version, which can matter in security-sensitive contexts.
- Dates showing when the document was really created or last edited.
- Keywords and subject with internal project names.
Editing for publication
For documents you publish on a website, good metadata helps: a meaningful title is shown in browser tabs and often in search results instead of the file name, and subject and keywords can help people find the document. Set the author to your organisation rather than an individual if staff change. Accessibility guidelines also recommend a descriptive title for PDFs.
Stripping before sharing
Stripping removes the document information dictionary (title, author, subject, keywords, creator, producer, dates) and the XMP metadata stream. It does not touch page content: text, images, comments and form data stay as they are. Metadata is one layer of what a PDF can reveal; others include tracked comments, hidden layers, text hidden under images, and attachments. For documents where that matters, use Redact PDF with Rasterise the whole document, which removes all of it.
Image metadata inside PDFs
Photos embedded in a PDF can carry their own metadata, including camera model and sometimes GPS location. Stripping PDF metadata does not reach inside embedded images. Strong compression, or redaction with whole-document rasterising, rebuilds every page as a fresh image without it.
Dates
Editing sets the modification date to now. Stripping removes both dates. If you need to keep the original creation date for records, note it from the display before you strip.
Checking metadata before you publish
Add the file here before you put a PDF on a website, send it outside your organisation or submit it to a tribunal, and look at what the form shows. Ask yourself whether you would be happy for the recipient to read each field. If not, edit it or strip it. Doing this once becomes a habit quickly, and it catches leftover names and draft titles that are embarrassing at best.
Office documents
PDFs inherit much of their metadata from the document they were exported from. Word, Excel and PowerPoint store the author and company from the computer's account settings, and Google Docs uses the document title. Fixing the source document's properties before exporting prevents the problem at the start; Word's "Inspect Document" feature removes personal information from the source file too.
Several files
This tool works on one PDF at a time so you can see each file's values. To strip metadata from many files at once, use strong compression or rasterising redaction, which rebuild documents without it.
The fields explained
| Field | What it usually holds |
|---|---|
| Title | Shown by viewers in the window or tab; often a template or draft name |
| Author | The account name of whoever created the source document |
| Subject | A short description; often empty |
| Keywords | Search terms; sometimes internal codes |
| Creator | The application that made the source (Word, InDesign…) |
| Producer | The software that wrote the PDF |
| Created / Modified | Dates and times, often with a time zone |
Metadata and file names
The file name is not metadata. It is set by whoever saves the file and travels with it in emails and uploads. A file called Final-v3-JS-edits.pdf can reveal as much as an author field, so rename files sensibly before sharing them, as well as cleaning their properties.
Renaming a file does not change its metadata either, and the reverse is also true, so check both.
Checking takes a few seconds, and it is worth doing every time a document leaves your hands.
Privacy: the file stays on your device
Online PDF services upload your document to their servers, process it there and keep it for a while. This tool does the work in your browser. The file is read into the page's memory, processed by open-source libraries (pdf-lib for editing and pdf.js for rendering) in a background worker, and the result is offered back as a download. Nothing is sent anywhere, there is no account, and closing the tab discards everything. You can check it: open your browser's developer tools, watch the Network tab while you run the tool, and you will see no upload. After the page has loaded once it also works offline.