View and Edit PDF Metadata
See what a PDF says about you, then change it or strip it out. Most documents quietly carry an author name and the software that made them, put there by whatever wrote the file rather than by you. Everything happens in this browser tab and nothing is uploaded.
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The pages
Load a PDF to see its pages.
The pages themselves are untouched. Only the information about the document changes.
Your PDF never leaves this device.The file is read by your browser, the metadata is shown and edited here in the page, and the download comes from your own machine. Whatever the document says about you is never sent anywhere.
Your name is probably in there already
Word puts your account name in the author field. Most PDF printers record their own version in the producer field. Neither asks first, and neither is visible when you look at the document, so a drawing sent to a client can carry the name of whoever happened to export it and the exact build of the software on that machine.
How to use this tool
Drop a PDF on the box at the top. Everything the document records about itself appears immediately, with the fields that identify a person or a machine marked so you can see them at a glance.
Edit any field, or clear the lot in one press, then build the file. The pages are copied across untouched.
Your name is probably in there already
This is the part worth knowing even if you never use the tool.
A PDF carries a small set of fields about itself, and software fills them in without asking. Word puts the account name from the machine into the author field. Most PDF printers record their own name and exact version in the producer field. Neither is visible when you open the document, and neither is obvious unless you go looking.
So a drawing sent to a client can quietly carry the name of whoever exported it, along with the build number of the software on that machine. Usually that is harmless. Occasionally it is not, and either way it is better to know.
What this is not
Clearing these fields is not redaction, and it is important not to confuse the two.
This changes what the document says about itself. Anything printed on the pages is still printed on the pages. If a name appears in the text of a report, stripping the metadata does nothing about it.
It also does not touch anything embedded deeper in the file, such as the internal identifiers a producer may attach, or information carried inside images. Treat it as tidying the label rather than sanitising the contents.
Dates are stranger than they look
A PDF date is written as the letter D, a colon, then the year, month, day, hour, minute and second run together, followed by a time zone. Everything after the year is optional, so a real document might record nothing more than a year, or a full timestamp with an offset of four and a half hours.
That flexibility is where naive software goes wrong. A date of month thirteen is not a real date, but a parser that simply hands the numbers to a calendar will roll it into January of the following year and display something confidently incorrect. Here anything impossible is refused rather than guessed at, and the date is shown in plain language.
A worked check you can repeat
Open any PDF that came out of a word processor. The producer field almost certainly names the software and its version, and the author field often names a person. Neither was typed by anyone on purpose.
Press clear every field and build. Open the result here again: everything reads as empty, while the pages are exactly as they were.
The date handling and the field planning were checked against an independent implementation before publishing: thirty nine hand written cases covering every truncation of the date format, positive and negative zone offsets, the Z form, dates written without the usual prefix, and every impossible value that should be refused. Then sixty thousand generated cases confirming that every legal form parses, that a full date survives being written back out and read again, and that rubbish is always refused rather than guessed at.
Mistakes that catch people out
Thinking this hides something on the page. It does not. What is printed stays printed.
Clearing the title on a document that needs one. The title is what many readers show in the window bar and what some search tools index.
Assuming an empty author means anonymous. Other traces can remain elsewhere in the file. This handles the obvious fields, not everything.
Expecting the producer field to clear. It cannot. Whatever software writes a PDF stamps its own name there, and that includes the library this tool uses to save your file. It is shown so you can read what the original said, but saving will replace it.
Editing then forgetting to build. The fields on screen are your intended values. Nothing changes on disk until you download.
Assuming a password protected file will open. It will not. Remove the protection first, in software that has the password.
Common questions
Is my PDF uploaded anywhere?
No. The file is read by your browser, the metadata is shown and edited here on the page, and the download comes from your machine. Nothing crosses the network.
Why does my name appear in a document I did not write?
Whatever produced the PDF put it there. Word uses the account name on the machine, and most PDF printers record their own version. Neither asks first.
Does clearing the fields change the pages?
No. Only the information about the document changes. The pages, the text and the images are all copied across untouched.
Is this the same as redacting a document?
No. This changes what the document says about itself. Anything visible on the pages is still there, and removing that is a different job entirely.
What is the difference between creator and producer?
Creator is the program you typed the document in, such as a word processor. Producer is whatever turned it into a PDF, which is often a different program.
Can I see when the document was made?
Yes, if the date was recorded. It is shown in plain language rather than as the raw code, and left blank when the document does not carry one.
Related PDF tools and reference
Reference: ISO 32000, the standard that defines the document information dictionary and its date format.