PDF Metadata Remover: Strip Hidden Info From Documents
Every PDF carries a hidden record about itself: who wrote it, what software produced it, when it was created and last modified — often down to the username of the person who exported it. Send a PDF, and that record travels with the document.
This tool removes the metadata layer from your PDF and rebuilds the file so the removed data is actually gone — not just hidden.
PDF up to 50 MB free · processed over HTTPS and deleted immediately
What's hiding inside a PDF
PDF metadata lives in two places. The document information dictionary holds the classic fields: Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, Creator (the application that made the document) and Producer (the software that converted it to PDF), plus creation and modification dates. Alongside it, most modern PDFs also embed an XMP packet — an XML block that can mirror those fields and add editing history, document IDs, and toolchain details.
The values are more personal than people expect. Office suites write the logged-in user's name into Author by default, so invoices, resumes and reports routinely ship with a real name embedded. Producer strings reveal what software — and sometimes what license — your organisation runs. Timestamps can contradict the story a document tells: a 'final' report whose modification date is three minutes before sending says more than it should.
When PDF metadata becomes a problem
Sending a resume from a template where the Author field still names someone else. Publishing a report that should be anonymous while your username sits in the document properties. Selling digital products whose files reveal your personal computer account name. Submitting documents in a dispute where the creation date undermines your claim. Sharing client deliverables that leak your internal toolchain. In every case the visible pages are fine — it's the invisible layer that talks.
Unlike image EXIF, PDF metadata is shown prominently by every PDF reader: File → Properties is two clicks away for anyone you send the document to. Assume it will be read.
Why 'deleting' PDF metadata often isn't enough
PDFs have a trap that most cleaning tools ignore: the format supports incremental updates. When software edits a PDF — including many tools that 'remove' metadata — it appends the change to the end of the file and leaves the original data in place. The metadata looks gone in a viewer, but the old values are still inside the file and can be recovered by reading the previous revision.
This tool closes that hole. After clearing the metadata fields, the PDF is rewritten from scratch: the file structure is rebuilt and unreferenced objects — including old metadata revisions — are dropped. What you download is a clean document, not a document wearing a mask.
How the cleaning works, honestly
PDF processing can't run in your browser the way our photo cleaning does, so PDFs take a different path: your file is uploaded over an encrypted HTTPS connection to our cleaning server, processed in a temporary workspace, streamed straight back to you, and deleted immediately. Nothing is written to permanent storage, nothing is logged about the file's contents, and there is no queue of stored documents — the server holds your file for seconds, exactly as long as the cleaning takes.
What gets removed: the document info dictionary fields (Author, Title, Subject, Keywords, Creator, Producer, dates) and the XMP metadata packet, plus orphaned prior revisions via the rewrite. What stays: every page, all text and images, bookmarks, links and form fields — the document itself is untouched.
Check the result yourself
After downloading the cleaned PDF, open File → Properties in any reader: the identity fields should read blank. For a deeper check, command-line users can run exiftool on the file and compare before and after. Cleaning is repeatable and idempotent — running an already-clean file through again simply returns another clean copy.
If your document is sensitive enough that even transient server processing is unacceptable, that's a legitimate call: keep it offline and use a local tool instead. For photos, this site cleans entirely inside your browser — the upload path exists only for formats that browsers can't safely rewrite.
Frequently asked questions
Is my PDF uploaded to a server?
Yes — PDF rewriting needs server-side tooling, so the file travels over HTTPS to our cleaning server, is processed in seconds, returned to you, and deleted immediately. It is never written to durable storage, never backed up, and never used for anything except your cleaning request. Photos, by contrast, are cleaned entirely in your browser.
Does cleaning change the document's content?
No. Pages, text, images, bookmarks, links and form fields are preserved. Only the metadata layer — document properties and the XMP packet — is removed, and the file is rebuilt so removed values aren't recoverable from earlier revisions.
Can old metadata be recovered from the cleaned PDF?
That's the point of the rewrite step. Tools that only blank the fields often leave previous values inside the file via PDF incremental updates. This cleaner rewrites the document structure and drops unreferenced objects, so prior metadata revisions don't ship with the download.
What's the file size limit?
Single PDFs up to 50 MB are free, no account needed. Larger files and batch cleaning are Pro features — see pricing. The per-file ceiling for paid plans is 2 GB.