Guide

View, strip, or edit PDF metadata

Every PDF carries metadata you rarely see: the author, the software that made it, and creation and modified dates. That can quietly reveal who wrote a file, what tool they used, and when. Here is how to see it, and how to remove or change it without touching a word on the page.

What is in there

PDFs store a DocInfo dictionary and often an XMP block: Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, Creator, Producer, and CreationDate and ModDate. Exporting from an office suite, a scanner, or a bank system usually stamps identifying details you did not intend to share.

See it first

Drop your PDF into pdfblah and it shows the Document Info right away, exactly as it is in your file. No guessing about what you are about to share.

Strip it or change it

1. Open pdfblah.com and drop in your PDF.
2. To remove everything, click "Strip metadata". Author, dates, producer, and the rest are cleared.
3. To change one field, add a rule, set the action to Metadata, pick the field (say Author), and type the new value. A blank value clears it.
4. Preview and download. The page content is untouched; only the metadata changes.

Every other edit in pdfblah keeps your metadata intact by default, so it changes only when you ask.

From the command line

The same engine is open source:

pipx install pdfblah
pdfblah meta in.pdf                                   # report the metadata
pdfblah meta in.pdf clean.pdf --strip                 # remove it all
pdfblah meta in.pdf out.pdf --set author="Jane Roe"   # set a field

See the pdfblah project on GitHub.