Remove PDF Metadata before you share it

How can I remove the author's name from a PDF?

Run it through the remover. The Author field comes back empty, along with the title, subject, keywords and creating app. Then open the copy in the metadata checker to see what is left. If a comment, a photo or the page itself shows your name, the remover will not catch it, because it only empties the document properties.

Does removing metadata remove everything hidden?

No. Comments keep their author names, attachments stay attached, and photos keep their hidden camera details, which can include GPS coordinates. Text covered by a white box can still be copied. The file name stays too, with _cleaned added. To get rid of hidden text, use a redaction tool that deletes the content.

Why does the cleaned copy still show a date and a program name?

Two values cannot stay empty. The cleaning program writes its own name as the producer and stamps fresh created and modified dates. The original dates are gone, but the file now shows when it was cleaned.

A sample file before and after cleaning

The remover is built for document properties: the values shown under File, Properties in most readers. The table shows exactly what changed in the sample and, just as important, what did not.

Measured contents of the sample before and after the remover

How the properties are emptied

Ghostscript's pdfwrite device reads the whole document and writes a new file at PDF 1.4 compatibility. After the input it processes a small pdfmark instruction, [ /Title () /Author () /Subject () /Keywords () /Creator () /Producer () /DOCINFO pdfmark, which sets those six entries to empty strings. The order matters: placed before the input, the original values would be copied back over the blanks.

Two values cannot stay empty. Ghostscript writes its own name and version as the producer, and it stamps fresh creation and modification dates. The original dates are therefore gone, but the file still shows when it was cleaned. The XMP packet is generated again from the emptied values, so custom XMP entries from the original do not survive.

If Ghostscript is unavailable on the server, a fallback rebuilds the file with FPDI and TCPDF instead. That route leaves the entries out rather than empty, records TCPDF as the producer, and drops bookmarks, comments, attachments and form fields because it copies page content only.

Identifying details the remover does not touch

• Comments keep their text and author name, as the sample's reviewer note did.
• Attached files stay attached and can be saved out by anyone who opens the PDF.
• Text covered by shapes, white boxes or images remains in the file and can be copied or searched. Use a redaction tool that deletes the content.
• JPEG images pass through with their embedded EXIF data, which can include camera details, author names and GPS coordinates.
• Names, addresses and dates written on the pages, in headers and in footers are page content and are not changed.
• The download is named after your original file with _cleaned added, so rename it if the file name itself is revealing.

Password-protected and restricted files

A file that needs a password to open is refused with "This PDF is password-protected." Ghostscript cannot read its pages, and before this check it returned a blank one-page file as a successful result. Remove the password with the password tool first, then clean the unlocked copy.

Files protected only by permission restrictions, such as no printing or no copying, open without a password, but rewriting them removes the encryption and the restrictions with it. The remover therefore refuses them with a message saying the owner's restrictions would be removed. Unlock the file with its owner password if you mean to drop the restrictions, clean that copy, and protect it again if needed.

Every cleaned copy must have the same page count as the original. If it does not, the run fails and no file is offered.

Terms used on this page

Each cleaning uses one check. The uploaded file is deleted straight after processing; the cleaned copy is removed by the hourly cleanup once it is more than 24 hours old. A troubleshooting log keeps the original file name, its size and the property values read before cleaning, and that log is not part of the 24-hour file cleanup.

• Info dictionary: the original key-value store for document properties, read by almost every PDF reader.
• XMP: an XML metadata stream that can repeat the Info values and hold any additional schema.
• Producer: the program that wrote the PDF file. It is often different from the Creator, the program the document was written in.
• pdfmark: a PostScript instruction that Ghostscript uses to set PDF features such as document properties while writing a file.