PaperKit › Privacy › Remove PDF Metadata
Remove PDF Metadata
Remove PDF metadata in your browser: clears the author, title, subject, keywords, creator, and producer fields. Free, private, no upload. Clean a PDF before you share it.
How to use Remove PDF Metadata
- Drop a PDF file.
- Click Run.
- Author, title, and metadata stripped.
How to remove metadata from a PDF
Every PDF carries a document information block that can reveal who wrote it, which company or template it came from, the software that produced it, and the original title. PaperKit clears those fields locally in your browser so you can share a cleaner file.
Which fields get removed
PaperKit blanks the six standard document information entries: Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, Creator (the application that made the original document, such as Word or LaTeX), and Producer (the PDF engine that wrote the file). These are the fields shown under Properties in Acrobat, Preview, Chrome, and most PDF readers.
What is not removed
The tool does not rewrite embedded XMP metadata packets that some Adobe and publishing tools add, and it never touches visible text, annotations, form fields, bookmarks, or attachments. If a reader still shows an author after cleaning, the value is coming from XMP. For a hard scrub, convert the pages with PDF to Images and rebuild the file with Image to PDF, which discards all embedded data.
Why clean metadata before sharing
Résumés built from a template often carry the template author as the document author. Legal filings, anonymous peer-review submissions, tenders, and whistleblower documents can all leak a name, an employer, or an internal file name through metadata alone. Clearing the fields takes one click and costs nothing in quality.
The cleaning happens on your device
Uploading a confidential file to a website just to make it more private defeats the purpose. PaperKit opens the PDF with pdf-lib inside your browser tab, rewrites the information block, and hands back paperkit-clean-metadata.pdf without any network request.
Combine with other cleanup steps
Metadata removal pairs well with deleting draft pages, compressing scans, and adding a final signature. The Clean Metadata and Compress PDF workflow runs both steps on one file so you download a single finished document.
Next steps
- Clean metadata and compress in one workflow
- Flatten a PDF to images for a hard scrub
- Delete draft or cover pages
- Sign the cleaned PDF
Related PDF tools
- Compress PDF — Reduce PDF size by re-encoding images and stripping metadata. Works for most scanned PDFs.
- Sign PDF — Add a typed or drawn signature to a PDF in the browser, then download the signed file.
- Merge PDF — Combine multiple PDF files into one PDF in the order you choose, fast and free in your browser.
Frequently asked questions
Which metadata fields does PaperKit remove?
It clears Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, Creator, and Producer, the standard document information fields shown under Properties in most PDF readers.
Does it remove XMP metadata too?
Not yet. Embedded XMP packets added by some Adobe and publishing tools are left in place. If a property survives cleaning, flatten the file with PDF to Images followed by Image to PDF to discard everything.
Does removing metadata change the content or quality of the PDF?
No. Only the information fields are rewritten. Text, images, annotations, forms, and bookmarks are untouched and the file is not re-rendered.
How can I check what metadata a PDF contains?
In Preview on a Mac open Tools then Show Inspector; in Acrobat open File then Properties; in Chrome open the PDF and use Document Properties from the three-dot menu.
Is my PDF uploaded to remove the metadata?
No. The cleaning runs entirely in your browser and the file never leaves your device.