Remove PDF Metadata & JPEG EXIF — Edit or Erase Without Uploading

Edit PDF title, author and keywords, or remove document metadata and JPEG EXIF, GPS, IPTC and comments locally.

Metadata Editor & Eraser handles two genuinely different jobs behind one interface: rewriting or removing a PDF's Title, Author, Subject, and Keywords fields, and stripping the hidden metadata segments — EXIF, GPS, IPTC, and comments — out of a JPEG photo without touching a single pixel of the actual image. Drop either file type and the tool reads what applies and hides what doesn't.

How to remove PDF metadata

  1. Drop a PDF or a JPEG photo onto the upload zone, or click it to choose one file.
  2. For a PDF, look over the Title, Author, Subject and Keywords boxes, which open pre-filled with whatever the document already carries.
  3. Click Erase metadata to delete every document property plus the XMP stream, or type new values and click Save edited copy to keep only those four fields.
  4. For a JPEG, Erase metadata is the only action offered; it drops EXIF, GPS, XMP, IPTC and comment data without re-encoding the picture.
  5. Download the result, saved with -metadata-removed or -metadata-edited added to its name; your original file stays as it was.

What metadata reveals and why remove it

PDF properties can name the person who wrote a document, record the program and version that produced it, and stamp when it was created and last modified; an XMP block may also carry an editing history. Photos give away more: EXIF can store the camera or phone model, the exact moment a picture was taken and, when location was switched on, GPS coordinates precise enough to point at a building.

None of that is visible on the page or in the image, so it's easy to hand over without realising. Cleaning a file before posting or emailing it keeps those details out of strangers' hands, and doing it in the browser means the uncleaned original never sits on somebody else's server on the way.

PDF cleanup: what actually gets deleted

Erasing a PDF's metadata removes its entire Info dictionary — every document property, not just the four fields shown in the edit form — plus the document-level XMP metadata stream some editors leave behind. Editing instead of erasing clears that same dictionary and XMP stream first, then writes back only Title, Author, Subject, and a comma-split Keywords list with whatever you typed, so properties such as Creator, Producer and the creation date disappear in both modes.

Neither mode touches anything visible: no page content, no annotations, no attachments, and no metadata sitting inside an embedded image or object within the PDF are affected by this pass, since those live in entirely different parts of the file's structure than the document-level Info dictionary and XMP stream this tool targets.

JPEG cleanup works by cutting segments, not by re-saving the image

A JPEG file is a sequence of marker-delimited segments, and this tool walks that sequence byte by byte, dropping exactly three kinds — the APP1 segments that carry EXIF (camera details and, when present, GPS coordinates) and XMP; Photoshop and IPTC metadata; and comment segments — while copying every other segment through untouched. The actual compressed image data is one of the segments it copies through, meaning the picture itself is never decoded, resampled, or recompressed; what comes out has identical pixels to what went in.

Removing EXIF also removes any orientation tag stored there, which is why a photo that displayed right-side-up because of that tag might display rotated afterward — the pixels haven't moved, only the instruction that used to tell a viewer how to rotate them on display is gone. Color profiles are a separate, untouched segment, so color reproduction isn't affected.

Only PDFs and JPEGs, checked by content, not by filename

The tool decides what kind of file you dropped by reading its actual first bytes — the PDF file signature or the JPEG start-of-image marker — rather than trusting the file extension, so a renamed or mislabeled file is still handled correctly, and a genuinely unsupported format is rejected with an error instead of silently producing garbage output.

Metadata editing is free up to 300 pages per document; longer documents need Pro.

What this tool won't remove for you

Questions people ask about Metadata Editor & Eraser

What is PDF metadata?
It's information stored about the document rather than printed on its pages: the Info dictionary fields such as Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, Creator, Producer and dates, plus an optional XMP block written in XML. Most PDF viewers show it in a document properties dialog.
Why should I remove metadata before sharing?
Because it travels silently with the file. A contract sent to a client can reveal who drafted it and when, and a photo posted online can reveal where it was taken. Erasing it takes seconds and changes nothing a reader sees on the page or in the picture.
Does removing EXIF data make a photo smaller?
Slightly. The file shrinks by the size of the segments removed, usually a few kilobytes and sometimes more when an embedded preview thumbnail or a large XMP block was present. The image data itself is copied unchanged, so for a real size cut use Image Compressor instead.
Do social media apps remove EXIF automatically?
Some services strip or rewrite metadata when you upload, others keep it, and their behaviour can change without notice. This tool can't check what a given platform does, so the safe assumption is that anything in the file may reach whoever receives it; clean it here before you post or send.
Can I clean several files at once?
No, it works on one file at a time: each drop loads a single PDF or JPEG, and choosing another file replaces the current one. For a folder of photos, repeat the drop for each; since nothing is uploaded, every pass takes only as long as your browser needs to rewrite the file.
Does erasing PDF metadata remove text or images from the document?
No. Erasing only clears the document's Info dictionary — Title, Author, and every other document property — and its XMP metadata stream. Every page's visible content, annotations, and attachments stay exactly as they were; nothing about what a viewer sees on the page changes.
Will cleaning up a JPEG's metadata make the photo lower quality?
No — the image's compressed pixel data is copied through untouched rather than decoded and re-saved, so cleaning metadata never recompresses or resamples the picture. Only the surrounding metadata segments, such as EXIF, IPTC, and comments, are removed; the photo itself comes out pixel-identical.
Why does my photo look rotated after removing its metadata?
Removing EXIF removes the orientation tag stored alongside it, and some viewers use that tag to display a photo right-side-up without ever rotating the actual pixels. Once the tag is gone, a viewer that relied on it shows the image the way its raw pixels are actually stored.
Does this tool support formats other than PDF and JPEG?
No. It checks a file's actual header bytes and only proceeds for a genuine PDF or JPEG; PNG, WebP, HEIC, and every other image or document format are outside its scope and will be rejected rather than partially processed.

Related tools on BrakeTools

Content reviewed 2026-09-27.