PDF Metadata Editor

What PDF metadata is and why it matters

Every PDF can carry descriptive information alongside its pages: a title, the author's name, a subject, keywords, the application that created the original (the creator), the library that produced the PDF (the producer) and the creation and modification dates. Viewers show the title in the window or tab bar, search engines use it for results, and document management systems index the keywords. At the same time, metadata can reveal more than you intend — an employee's full name, the exact software version, or the date a draft was first written.

This PDF metadata editor lets you inspect all of those fields, correct them or wipe them in a few clicks. Everything runs locally with the pdf-lib library, so the document never leaves your computer.

Editing fields and dates

After you open a file, its current values appear in the form. Type new values, or clear a field to remove that entry completely rather than leaving an empty string. Dates use your local time zone and are stored in the standard PDF date format. Many PDFs also contain an XMP metadata block, an XML copy of the same information that some viewers read in preference to the classic fields. The “Remove the XMP metadata stream” option is enabled by default so that the values you enter are the ones people actually see. The pages themselves, including text, images, links and forms, are copied unchanged.

Stripping metadata before sharing

Before publishing a report, submitting a manuscript or sending a document to a client, it is good practice to remove hidden information. “Strip all metadata” deletes the document information dictionary and the XMP stream, and discards the underlying objects so the old values are not left in the file. Note that this cleans document-level metadata only: names written inside the page text, comments, embedded files and EXIF data inside images are not affected. Password-protected PDFs must be unlocked first, because an encrypted file cannot be rewritten without the password.