Strip hidden metadata — author name, creation date, software info, annotations, and more.
A PDF can carry far more information about its creator than the pages themselves show. Author names, creation dates, the software used to build the file, annotations, and even embedded files can all be hidden inside the document. The metadata sanitizer strips this hidden data out, leaving a clean PDF you can share without giving away who made it or how. The tool is part of the Premium subscription and runs entirely in your browser, so the file you clean never leaves your device.
Open a document's properties and you might find the author's full name, the original creation date, the producer and creator application, and a subject line. On its own, each detail seems harmless. Together they can tell a recipient a surprising amount about the document's origin, its age, and the environment that produced it — details you may not want traveling with the file.
Annotations are another quiet leak. Comments, highlights, and sticky notes live in a layer attached to pages, and they can surface when someone digs into the file structure. For anyone preparing a document for public release, clearing this layer is just as important as clearing the visible metadata, because a stray reviewer note can expose an entire internal conversation.
The sanitized output is not just emptied — it is rebuilt with neutral values. The title becomes "Untitled," author and subject are cleared, and the creator and producer are set to a generic label, so the file no longer points back to the person or software that made it. The page content itself is preserved, so the document remains fully readable after cleaning.
Because the rebuild touches the document structure rather than just the visible properties, the results are consistent across files regardless of which application produced them. What you download is a freshly written PDF with the identifying layers left behind. The cleaned copy downloads with a sanitized- prefix, so you always know which version is safe to distribute.
Setting the title to a neutral value and the producer to a generic label is deliberate. If those fields were simply deleted, some viewers would rewrite them from their own defaults or leave the file looking damaged. Filling them with stable, anonymous values keeps the document well-formed while removing any clue about who created it.
Pro tip
Sanitize as the final step before handing a document over. Run any edits you need first, then clean the metadata last so your editing software does not write fresh identifying information back into the file after you have already stripped it once.
Because sanitizing rebuilds the document and removes structural data, it is a premium feature rather than part of the free set of tools. Subscribers get unlimited sanitizing runs, and the browser-based processing means even this deeper cleanup never sends your document to a server. If you share PDFs with clients, reviewers, or the public on a regular basis, this is the tool that keeps your name off the finished file.
Lawyers preparing exhibits for another party, researchers releasing datasets, freelancers delivering work samples, and government-facing contractors all have a reason to sanitize. The common thread is a document that leaves your control and should not carry fingerprints. If a file has ever gone out with your name embedded in its properties when you did not intend it, this tool exists for exactly that scenario.