How to Remove or Edit PDF Metadata (Author, Title, Dates)

Published: October 15, 2026

Every PDF carries a small set of properties you never typed: an author name, a title, the program that made it, and the date it was created. Most of the time nobody looks. But send a contract, a tender, a CV or an anonymised report to the wrong reader and those fields can say more than the document does — your full name from an Office profile, a client's name in an old title, or a creation date that contradicts the story the file is meant to tell.

This guide shows how to view PDF metadata, how to change or remove it, and the one technical catch that most "remove metadata" guides leave out.

Short version: open the free PDF Metadata Editor, drop in your file, clear or rewrite the fields, and download the result. It runs entirely in your browser, so the PDF is never uploaded anywhere.

What PDF metadata actually contains

The classic set of PDF properties lives in a part of the file called the document information dictionary. Whatever software exported the PDF fills it in automatically. These are the fields you will usually find:

Field	What it records	Typical source
Title	The document's title, often shown in the reader's title bar	The first heading, or an old filename
Author	Who wrote it	Your Office or operating-system account name
Subject	A one-line description	Usually blank unless someone set it
Keywords	Search terms	Document properties or tags
Creator	The application the document was written in	For example a word processor or design tool
Producer	The software that generated the PDF	A PDF library, printer driver or scanner
Created date	When the PDF was first produced	Set automatically at export
Modified date	When it was last changed	Updated by editing software

Many PDFs also contain a second copy of similar information in an XMP packet — an XML block that newer software writes alongside the dictionary. Keep that in mind; it matters later.

How to view metadata on a PDF

You probably already have something that can show it:

Chrome's built-in PDF viewer: open the PDF in a tab, click the three-dot menu at the top right of the viewer and choose Document properties.
Firefox: open the PDF, click the » (Tools) button in the viewer toolbar and choose Document Properties.
Adobe Acrobat Reader: File → Properties (Ctrl+D on Windows, Cmd+D on Mac), then the Description tab.
macOS Preview: Tools → Show Inspector (Cmd+I).
In any browser, without uploading: drop the file into the PDF Metadata Editor. It lists the title, author, subject, keywords, creator, producer, created and modified dates, plus the page count and page size.

Readers differ in which fields they show. Producer and creator are often hidden, and some viewers prefer the XMP values over the dictionary when both exist — which is why two programs can show different authors for the same file.

How to edit or remove PDF metadata without uploading the file

Most online PDF metadata editors work by uploading your document to a server, editing it there, and sending it back. That is a reasonable design for many jobs, but it is an awkward fit when the whole reason you are touching the metadata is that the file is sensitive. The InstantConverter PDF Metadata Editor does the edit inside your browser using the open-source pdf-lib library, so the file never leaves your device. Here is the process:

Open the PDF Metadata Editor and drag your PDF onto the drop zone, or click to choose it.
Read the current values. The Document Information panel shows the page count, page size, and the created and modified dates; the form below holds the editable fields.
To change metadata, type new values into Title, Author, Subject, Keywords (comma-separated), Creator or Producer.
To remove metadata, clear each field you want gone. Empty fields are saved as blank, not left with their old values.
Click Save Metadata, then Download PDF. You get a new copy named yourfile_metadata.pdf; the original on your disk is untouched.
Open the new file and check its properties again (see the verification section below).

Want to confirm nothing was sent? Open your browser's developer tools, switch to the Network tab, and repeat the steps. You will see the page's own scripts load, and no request carrying your PDF.

What the tool changes — and what it doesn't

Being precise here saves you from a false sense of security:

Edited: title, author, subject, keywords, creator and producer.
Modified date: set automatically to the moment you save, so it reflects your edit rather than the original export. You cannot type a custom value.
Created date: shown but not editable. It is carried over unchanged, because it is often relied on as a record of when a document first existed.
XMP packets: not rewritten. The tool edits the document information dictionary only. If the PDF also carries an XMP packet with its own author or title, that packet stays as it was — and a reader that prefers XMP may keep showing the old value.
Encrypted PDFs: a password-protected file cannot be loaded. Remove the protection in the software you own first.

Many PDFs have no XMP packet at all, and many readers display the dictionary values, so for everyday files the edit is usually all you need. But if you are stripping metadata for a genuine confidentiality reason — blind review, an anonymised bid, a whistleblowing report — do not assume. Open the result in the same reader your recipient will use and check the properties there.

Other ways to change PDF metadata

A browser tool is the quickest option for most people, but it is not the only one.

Adobe Acrobat (paid versions). File → Properties → Description lets you edit the title, author, subject and keywords directly. Acrobat Pro also has a feature for removing hidden information from a document, which looks beyond metadata to things like comments and hidden layers. If your organisation already licenses it, that is a thorough route.

ExifTool and qpdf (command line, free). ExifTool can read and write both the information dictionary and XMP:

exiftool report.pdf
exiftool -Author="Jane Doe" -Title="Q3 Report" report.pdf
exiftool -all:all= report.pdf

One important detail from ExifTool's own documentation: its PDF edits are appended as an incremental update, so the original values are still physically present in the file and the change can be reversed. To make a removal stick, rewrite the file afterwards, for example with qpdf --linearize report.pdf clean.pdf, and check the result. This is powerful, but it is a lot of ceremony for changing an author name.

A checklist before you send a confidential PDF

View the properties and note anything you would not say out loud to the recipient.
Clear or rewrite the author, title, subject and keywords in the PDF Metadata Editor.
Remember the created date stays; if it matters, the fix is to re-export the document from its source.
Open the cleaned file in the reader your recipient uses — Acrobat, Chrome, Preview — and confirm the properties there, since some readers show XMP values.
Check the rest of the document too. Metadata is one layer; comments, tracked changes carried into the PDF, form fields and photos with their own EXIF data are others.

Why do this in the browser at all?

Metadata clean-up is almost always done on files you want to keep private. Uploading such a file to a server to remove the private parts means trusting that service with the very thing you are trying to protect. Browser-based tools sidestep the question: the work happens on your machine, and the only copy of the file is yours. It is also GDPR-friendly by design, because your files never leave your device in the first place.

The same approach powers every tool listed on our no-upload tools page — merging, splitting and compressing PDFs, compressing and resizing images, stripping EXIF data from photos, and more. If you want the full explanation of the architecture, read Client-Side vs. Server-Side File Processing.

Key takeaways

PDF metadata records the author, title, subject, keywords, creating software and dates, usually without you noticing.
You can view it in Chrome, Firefox, Acrobat Reader, macOS Preview, or the free PDF Metadata Editor.
The editor changes or clears title, author, subject, keywords, creator and producer, and sets the modified date to the time you save. The created date is view-only.
It does not rewrite XMP packets, so for confidential documents, verify the result in your recipient's reader.
Everything happens in your browser — your PDF is never uploaded.