View and edit PDF metadata
View and edit PDF title, author, subject, keywords, producer and dates, or strip every trace including the XMP block, without uploading a byte.
- Runs in your browser
- Files are never uploaded
- Free, no account
Your document and its hidden properties never leaves this tab — here is how to check
This page has no upload step and no server behind it. Two ways to confirm that yourself, neither of which requires trusting us:
- Turn off Wi-Fi or put the device in aeroplane mode after this page has loaded, then run the tool. It still works.
- Open your browser’s developer tools, switch to the Network tab, clear it, and process a file. No request appears.
The reason this matters: in 2025 the PDF service pdf.net was found exposing roughly 3.5 million user-uploaded documents, and formatter sites JSONFormatter.org and CodeBeautify leaked over 80,000 saved snippets containing live cloud credentials. Those are architectural failures — a file that is never sent cannot be exposed that way.
What a PDF knows about you
Open any PDF you did not make yourself and look at File → Properties. There is a decent chance it tells you the name of the person whose computer account created it, the exact software and version they used, and the minute they saved it. None of that is visible on the page, and almost nobody checks it before sending a document out.
The classic failures are well documented: a tender submitted with a competitor’s name still in the Author field because the template was reused; a “newly drafted” contract whose creation timestamp is eighteen months old; an anonymous complaint whose Creator field names the department’s single licensed copy of a niche application.
The fields, and where they come from
| Field | Typically set by | What it can reveal |
|---|---|---|
| Title | The authoring application, often from the source filename | Internal project names, draft numbers |
| Author | The operating-system account name | A real name, or a corporate username format |
| Subject / Keywords | Manually, or by a document management system | Internal classification, matter numbers |
| Creator | The program the document was written in | “Microsoft Word for Microsoft 365”, “LaTeX with hyperref” |
| Producer | The library that wrote the PDF | The exact toolchain and version |
| CreationDate / ModDate | Automatically, to the second, with a timezone offset | When it was really written — and in which timezone |
Two metadata stores, not one
PDF carries metadata in two places. The information dictionary is the old key-value block listed above. The XMP packet is an XML document stored in the catalogue, added by Adobe tools and most modern writers, and it can hold considerably more: original filenames, an instance ID and a document ID that link successive revisions of the same file together, the software history, and sometimes embedded thumbnails.
Clearing only the information dictionary — which is what most “remove PDF metadata” tools do — leaves the XMP packet in place, and the same information is still recoverable with a text editor. The panel above tells you whether an XMP block is present, and Strip everything removes both.
Clearing a field really clears it
There is a subtlety here that trips up a lot of libraries. Writing an empty string into the
Author entry is not the same as deleting the entry: some readers show the empty value,
others fall back to a cached copy, and a raw inspection still shows the key. When you empty
a field in this editor, the key is deleted from the information dictionary outright, and
cleared dates remove the CreationDate and ModDate entries rather
than writing 1970.
What this tool does not do
- It does not remove metadata embedded inside images on the page. A photograph with GPS EXIF data placed into a PDF keeps that data — pull it out with Extract Images from PDF and inspect it separately.
- It does not remove tracked changes, comments or hidden layers. Those are page content, not metadata.
- It does not remove text that is merely covered by a black rectangle. That is a redaction problem, and covering is not removing.
- It cannot preserve an existing password or permission set. A protected file can be read here, but the saved copy will be unprotected.
Reading metadata is as useful as writing it
The panel is worth opening even when you have no intention of changing anything. Checking the Producer field tells you what made a document — useful when verifying that a scan really came from the scanner it claims. Checking the dates on a contract, an invoice or a submission is a thirty-second sanity test that occasionally turns up something important.
And because nothing is uploaded, you can run that check on a file you would never hand to a web service: the document is opened by pdf-lib in this tab and stays there.
Questions
What can a PDF give away about me?
The information dictionary usually carries the author name from the account that created it, the application that produced it, and precise creation and modification timestamps. The XMP packet can add more — original filenames, document IDs that link revisions together, and editing history. All of it travels with the file.
What is the difference between the Info dictionary and XMP?
The Info dictionary is the old, simple key-value block that File → Properties displays. XMP is an XML packet stored separately in the document catalogue, and many tools write both. Clearing only the first leaves the second in place, which is why the strip option removes them together.
Does clearing a field really remove it?
Yes. A field you empty is deleted from the information dictionary rather than written as an empty string, so the old value is not left behind in the saved file.
Why do the creation and modification dates matter?
They are the fields most often used to challenge a document — a contract whose creation timestamp postdates the signing date, or a submission whose modification time falls after a deadline. Being able to read them before you send a file is as useful as being able to change them.
Does saving change the pages?
No. Only the metadata is rewritten. The page objects, fonts, images and text are copied through untouched, though the file is re-serialised, so the byte layout and total size will differ slightly from the original.