How to Remove Metadata from a PDF (And Why You Should)

A few years back, a journalist shared a "confidential" PDF report. The content was properly redacted — black bars over names and locations. Professional job. Except someone opened the file properties and found the author's full name, the company's registered software license, the exact date and time of every edit, and the GPS coordinates of where the document was created.

Whoops.

This happens more often than you'd think. PDF metadata is invisible to most people because you don't see it when you open the file normally. But it's there, and it can tell a surprisingly detailed story about who created a document, when, where, and with what tools.

What Is PDF Metadata, Exactly?

Every PDF file carries a bundle of information beyond the visible content. Think of it like the EXIF data in photos — you take a picture of your cat, but the file also records your camera model, GPS location, and the exact timestamp. PDFs work similarly.

Here's what a typical PDF might contain in its metadata:

• Author name — often your full name or username from your OS
• Creation date and time
• Modification date and time
• Software used — "Microsoft Word 2024" or "Adobe InDesign CC" etc.
• Company or organization name
• Title and subject fields
• Keywords
• PDF producer — the library or tool that generated the PDF
• XMP metadata — an XML-based format that can store even more details

Some of this is harmless. Some of it is not. It depends entirely on context.

When Does PDF Metadata Actually Matter?

Let me be honest — for most casual PDFs, metadata isn't a big deal. Nobody cares that your grocery list PDF was made in Google Docs on a Tuesday afternoon. But here are real scenarios where it becomes a problem:

Legal and Court Documents

Lawyers deal with this constantly. Metadata in legal PDFs can reveal edit histories, original authors (even after the document was "anonymized"), and timestamps that contradict official narratives. There have been actual court cases where metadata undermined testimony.

Whistleblowing and Journalism

If you're sharing documents anonymously, metadata can identify you. The author field alone might contain your name. The creation software might narrow down your department. Timestamps can correlate with your work schedule.

Business Proposals and Contracts

Sending a proposal to a client? The metadata might reveal that you created it using a competitor's template (awkward), or that the "custom" proposal was actually last modified three months ago for someone else (very awkward).

Personal Privacy

Your name, your software licenses, your computer's username — all of this can end up in a PDF without you realizing it. If you're sharing documents publicly (like uploading forms or templates), you might be leaking personal info to strangers.

How to Check What Metadata Your PDF Contains

Before you panic, let's see what's actually in your files. There are a few ways to check:

In Adobe Acrobat Reader (Free)

Open the PDF, then go to File → Properties. The Description tab shows the basic metadata. You'll see title, author, subject, keywords, and dates. This is just the surface level though — there's often more buried in the XMP data.

On Mac with Preview

Open the PDF in Preview, then Tools → Show Inspector (or Cmd+I). The General Info panel shows some metadata, but it's pretty limited.

Using exiftool (Command Line)

This is the power tool. Install exiftool and run:

exiftool yourfile.pdf

You'll get everything. And I mean everything. On a typical PDF exported from Microsoft Word, exiftool might spit out 40+ fields. It's eye-opening.

How to Remove Metadata from a PDF

Okay, you've seen what's in there and you want it gone. Here are your options.

Method 1: Use a Browser-Based Tool

The fastest approach. Our PDF editor lets you modify document properties, and tools like PDF flatten can strip out layers of embedded data. For a quick cleanup before sharing, this is usually enough.

The advantage of browser-based tools (especially ones that process locally like PeacefulPDF) is that your file doesn't get uploaded anywhere. Kind of important when the whole point is protecting your privacy.

Method 2: Using exiftool

The command line strikes again:

exiftool -all= yourfile.pdf

That's it. One command. The -all= flag removes all metadata. Exiftool creates a backup of the original by default (with an "_original" suffix), so you can't accidentally destroy anything.

For a whole folder:

exiftool -all= *.pdf

I use this probably once a week. It's become muscle memory at this point.

Method 3: Using qpdf

qpdf can linearize and clean up PDFs, stripping some metadata in the process:

qpdf --linearize --replace-input yourfile.pdf

This won't remove all metadata (qpdf focuses more on structure), but combined with exiftool it's a solid cleanup pipeline.

Method 4: Adobe Acrobat Pro

Acrobat Pro has a "Remove Hidden Information" feature under Tools → Redact. It finds and removes metadata, hidden text, bookmarks, comments, and other invisible data. It's thorough but, as always with Adobe, it costs money.

Go to Tools → Redact → Remove Hidden Information. Acrobat will scan the file and show you everything it found. You can then selectively remove items or nuke everything at once.

Method 5: Print to PDF

Here's a low-tech trick that works surprisingly well. Open your PDF and "print" it to a new PDF. On most systems, this creates a fresh file with minimal metadata — basically just the creation date and the PDF producer.

On Mac: File → Print → Save as PDF. On Windows: File → Print → Microsoft Print to PDF.

The downside is you lose things like hyperlinks, bookmarks, and form fields. The new file is essentially a "flat" version. But for a quick-and-dirty metadata scrub, it works.

Things That Metadata Removal Won't Fix

I want to set realistic expectations here. Removing metadata helps, but it's not a magic privacy wand.

• Embedded fonts can sometimes reveal information about the system that created the document.
• Document structure (like the internal object tree) can contain traces of editing software.
• Hidden text layers from OCR might contain data you didn't expect. If you scanned a document with OCR, there could be a text layer you can't see but someone could extract.
• Redaction done wrong — if you just put a black rectangle over text, the text is still there. That's not redaction, that's decoration. You need actual redaction tools that remove the underlying content.

For true document sanitization, you might want to combine metadata removal with flattening the PDF (which merges all layers into a single flat image layer) and running it through a proper redaction tool.

A Real-World Metadata Disaster

In 2003, the UK government published a dossier about Iraq's security infrastructure as a PDF. Someone ran the metadata through analysis tools and discovered the edit history, revealing that parts of the "intelligence report" were actually copied from a graduate student's thesis. The author names and edit timestamps were all right there in the file properties.

This became known as the "Dodgy Dossier" and it was a massive embarrassment. All because nobody bothered to clean the metadata before publishing.

More recently, companies have been caught reusing proposals by checking the author metadata — showing that the "custom" pitch deck was originally created for a different client. Oops.

Best Practices for PDF Metadata Hygiene

Here's my personal checklist before sharing any important PDF:

1. Check the metadata first. Open file properties or run exiftool. Know what's in there.
2. Strip metadata before sharing externally. Make it a habit, like checking for typos.
3. Use local tools. Don't upload sensitive documents to random websites for metadata removal. Use tools that process files locally.
4. Flatten if needed. If the document has layers, annotations, or form fields you don't want people to see, flatten it first.
5. Double-check after cleaning. Run exiftool again on the cleaned file. Trust but verify.

The Bottom Line

PDF metadata is one of those things that's easy to ignore and easy to forget about. Most of the time it's harmless. But when it's not, it can be genuinely damaging — to your privacy, your professional reputation, or your legal position.

The good news is that cleaning it up takes about five seconds once you know how. Whether you use exiftool, a browser-based tool, or even the print-to-PDF trick, there's no excuse for sending out documents that are leaking your personal information.

Make metadata cleanup part of your workflow. Future you will be grateful.