See and remove the metadata inside a PDF (in your browser)
Every PDF records who made it, with which software, and when. How to see all of it in two clicks and download a copy without it — without uploading the file anywhere.
You send a quote to a client as a PDF. The document says what you meant it to say, but the file says more: your full name, the template it came from, the software you work with and the exact minute you saved it. That is metadata, and it travels with the file even though it appears on no page.
Today we are publishing a tool to look at it and strip it: PDF metadata viewer. It runs in your browser, so the document never leaves your machine — not even to be analysed.
What a PDF keeps without telling you
Open any invoice you received this month and you will almost always find the same things:
- Author. The user account of whoever generated it. Sometimes a real name, sometimes the intern who built the template back in 2019.
- Created with and Produced by. Which program made it, and which version. If you are still on an old release of something, it is recorded right there.
- Title and subject. Usually inherited from the original template, and often unrelated to the document you are sending. I have seen quotes whose internal title was another client’s name.
- Creation and modification dates, down to the minute.
On top of that sits the XMP packet, a block of data many programs write on their own that repeats the author and the dates. It is why clearing the “Author” field in document properties sometimes achieves nothing: you removed it from one place and it is still in the other.
Seeing it
Drop the PDF on the tool and the report appears: pages, size, format version, the dimensions of the first page, and a table with everything the file stores about itself. If it stores nothing, it tells you that too.
The tool also flags two things worth checking before you trust a PDF somebody sent you: whether it carries embedded JavaScript, and whether it has an action that runs when the file opens. Neither proves the file is dangerous — there are legitimate uses — but a CV does not need to execute code, and neither does an invoice.
Removing it
Tick which fields to clear (all of them by default) and download a clean copy. The keys are deleted rather than blanked: analyse the resulting file again and the tool will report no metadata, because there genuinely is none.
What it does not do, and this matters: it does not touch the page content. If your name is written inside the document, it is still there. That needs proper redaction, which is a different job with a trap of its own.
When it is worth the ten seconds
No need to get obsessive about it, but some moments pay for themselves:
When you send documents outside your organisation — quotes, proposals, reports — and would rather not hand over the name of your template or the person who built it. When you publish a PDF on a website where it will be indexed. When you forward a document somebody sent you and have no idea what it carries. And above all when a file crosses from private to public: that is where metadata has caused the loudest embarrassments, with official documents revealing who had actually drafted them.
Why in the browser
There are online metadata inspectors that work by uploading your file. Think about that for a second: to find out what private information your document is carrying, you hand the whole thing to somebody else’s server. Ours runs the analysis with the browser engine, on your machine. You can switch off your wifi before dropping the file and it will still work.
Try the tool · And if you want the background, what your PDF reveals about you covers what has historically leaked this way.