Guide · Updated 2 November 2026

Remove metadata from PDFs

PDFs carry author names, software details and sometimes hidden layers or text left under a redaction. Here's how to clean them, with Acrobat or for free.

Short answer

To clear basic PDF metadata in Adobe Acrobat, open File (Mac) or Menu (Windows) > Document Properties, delete the author, title, subject and keywords, and save. To remove everything hidden, including comments, layers and embedded metadata, use Acrobat Pro's Sanitize option, which saves a clean copy. For free, exiftool can clear metadata, followed by qpdf to make the removal permanent.

What a PDF can hide

To see what your own PDF contains, including unapplied redactions and earlier saved versions, drop it into the Word and PDF metadata viewer.

  • Document properties: title, author, subject, keywords, creator app and producer.
  • XMP metadata: a fuller copy of the properties, sometimes including edit history.
  • Comments, form fields and attachments.
  • Hidden layers from design apps.
  • Text under fake redactions, where a black box was drawn over text that's still there.
  • Earlier versions, kept when a PDF is saved with incremental updates.

Adobe Acrobat: edit document properties

Works in the free Acrobat Reader for viewing and in Acrobat for editing.

  1. Open the PDF in Acrobat.
  2. Go to File > Document Properties (Mac) or Menu > Document Properties (Windows).
  3. On the Description tab, clear the title, author, subject and keywords.
  4. Click Additional Metadata to see and clear the rest.
  5. Save the file. This can't be undone, so keep a copy if you need the original.

Acrobat Pro: sanitize the whole document

Sanitizing removes hidden information in one go: metadata, comments, attachments, hidden layers, form data and more. It saves the result as a new file.

  1. Open the PDF in Acrobat Pro.
  2. Open the Redact tool.
  3. Choose the Sanitize option and confirm.
  4. Save the sanitized copy under a new name.

If you redact text first, Acrobat offers to sanitize right after you apply the redactions. Menu names have shifted between Acrobat versions, so if you can't find it, search the tools list for Sanitize.

Free: exiftool and qpdf

Both are free and run on Mac, Windows and Linux.

exiftool -all:all= document.pdf qpdf --linearize document.pdf document-clean.pdf

The first line clears all metadata. Because exiftool adds its change as an update rather than rewriting the file, the second line rewrites the PDF so the old metadata is really gone. Share document-clean.pdf.

Fake redactions

The most damaging PDF leaks come from text that only looked removed. To check a PDF you've received or made:

  1. Select all the text (Ctrl+A or Cmd+A) and copy it.
  2. Paste it into a plain text editor.
  3. If anything you thought was blacked out shows up, it wasn't redacted.

Pasting into our invisible character checker also shows any odd characters PDFs often add between letters.

Questions

What metadata is in a PDF?

Usually the title, author, subject, keywords, the app that created it, the PDF producer, and creation and edit dates. PDFs can also contain comments, form data, attachments, hidden layers and older versions of edited content.

Does blacking out text in a PDF remove it?

Not if you just draw a black box over it. The text is still in the file and can be copied out. Use a proper redaction tool, like Acrobat Pro's Redact, which deletes the text underneath.

Can I remove PDF metadata on a Mac without Acrobat?

Preview can't reliably clear all of it. The free command-line tools below work on Mac, Windows and Linux.

Why does exiftool need qpdf afterwards?

exiftool writes PDF changes as an update added to the end of the file, so the old metadata is still inside and can be recovered. Rewriting the file with qpdf removes the old version for good.