PDF Metadata Viewer

Document metadata leaks more than people expect, and it leaks quietly. The Author field is usually filled in automatically from the operating system account, so it often carries a person’s real full name even when the document itself is anonymous. The Producer field records the exact software and version, which occasionally includes a licensee name. The two dates reveal when a document was really created and last touched, which has embarrassed more than one organisation that claimed a report predated an event. None of this is visible while reading the file — it takes a properties dialog or a tool like this one to see it. Worth knowing about the removal: the standard fields can be blanked, but the dates cannot be deleted, only overwritten, so this tool sets them to the Unix epoch rather than inventing a plausible-looking false date. And if a document is genuinely sensitive, the information dictionary is not the only place to check — the XMP packet is separate, and anything written into the visible page content is not metadata at all.

The fields live in the PDF’s document information dictionary: Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, Creator, Producer, CreationDate and ModDate. Clearing them writes empty strings in place of the existing values and resets both dates, then the document is saved without the automatic metadata refresh that would otherwise stamp fresh values straight back in.

This edits the document information dictionary. Some authoring software also embeds an XMP metadata packet, which is stored separately and is not rewritten here — a determined forensic examination could still recover values from it. Text inside the pages themselves, such as a name in a letterhead, is page content and is untouched. Encrypted PDFs cannot be modified. The dates cannot be deleted outright, only overwritten, so they are set to the Unix epoch as an obvious placeholder.

A CV exported from a word processor typically shows the author’s full account name, the original filename as the title, and the exact minute it was last saved — three details most people never intended to send.

1. Choose your PDF and leave the mode on "just show me".
2. Read what the document is currently revealing.
3. Switch to remove or edit, depending on what you need.
4. Download the cleaned or updated copy.

• Assuming a clean-looking document has no metadata — it is invisible until you look.
• Believing that removing metadata anonymises text printed on the page itself.
• Re-saving the cleaned file in an editor afterwards, which writes fresh metadata back in.
• Treating metadata removal as sufficient for a genuinely sensitive document.

Every PDF carries a document information block: who wrote it, when, and which software produced it. This tool shows exactly what is in there, and lets you blank it all out or replace it with values of your own before you send the file on.

Anyone sending a document outside their organisation who would rather not include the author’s name, an internal filename or their software licence.

• Shows all eight document-information fields, including the two dates.
• Clears everything in one pass and gives you a clean copy to download.
• Rewrites fields properly rather than appending a second set of values.
• Page content is left completely untouched.

• Cleaning a CV or proposal before sending it to a company.
• Checking what a PDF you received reveals about its origin.
• Setting a proper title so the document displays sensibly in a reader’s tab.
• Removing an internal author name before publishing a document.