Remove metadata from photos and PDFs

How to remove metadata from a photo or PDF

1. Choose one file. Select a JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF, or PDF. The inspector identifies the real file format from its bytes rather than trusting only the filename.
2. Review the privacy report. Check exactly which fields were found and their values. GPS is flagged separately from lower-risk fields such as software names and dates.
3. Download and verify the scrubbed copy. Supported images and PDFs get a new -scrubbed file. Open that copy before sharing it to confirm its visible content is still correct.

This is useful when you need to remove photo location data before a marketplace listing, strip an author's name from a PDF before public distribution, or check what a file reveals before attaching it to a forum post. The selected file stays in this browser tab; the tool does not send it to an upload or processing endpoint.

Why metadata hygiene matters

Photos and documents routinely carry far more than the pixels or text you see. A phone photo can record the exact GPS coordinates of where it was taken, the camera model, and the moment it was shot. A PDF exported from a word processor often embeds the author's name, the company software that produced it, and creation and modification timestamps. When you share such a file publicly — an auction listing, a forum post, a resale ad — that embedded data travels with it, and anyone who downloads it can read it.

• GPS coordinates reveal where a photo was taken, sometimes down to the meter.
• Camera model and software fingerprint your devices and workflow.
• Author and creator fields can expose a real name or employer that the visible content never shows.
• Timestamps tell readers when a file was made and last touched.

This tool's job is to make that hidden layer visible before you share — and to remove it when you don't want it.

How it works

When you choose a file, the page reads it entirely in memory. For images it detects the format from the file's magic bytes, reads the pixel dimensions, and parses embedded EXIF metadata; for PDFs it reads the document information dictionary and XMP metadata. Each privacy-relevant field is classified by severity — GPS is high, device and author fields medium, descriptions and dates low.

The scrubbed copy is produced losslessly: for JPEG, PNG, and WebP images the page removes only the metadata segments or chunks (EXIF, XMP, text chunks, timestamps) and writes the rest of the file back byte-for-byte — the image data is never re-encoded, so there is no quality loss. For PDFs it rebuilds the document without the metadata dictionary and XMP stream while preserving every page and its content.

What scrubbing does — and doesn't do

Images. The scrub removes EXIF (including GPS), XMP, Photoshop IRB, and PNG text/time chunks. It does not re-encode pixels, so there is no quality loss and the picture itself is untouched. Two limitations: GIF files have no standard EXIF container, so there is nothing to strip, and some formats a browser cannot parse are rejected with a clear message. Remember that the visible content of an image (a street sign, a face, a screen) is never removed by any metadata tool.

PDFs. The scrub removes the document metadata dictionary and XMP stream — title, author, subject, keywords, creator, producer, and dates. It deliberately preserves the page content: text, images, links, form fields, annotations, and embedded attachments are not removed. A PDF whose pages themselves contain sensitive text needs a redaction tool, not a metadata scrub.

Scope. This prototype inspects one file at a time, supports JPEG, PNG, WebP, and GIF images plus PDF documents, and scrubs JPEG, PNG, and WebP images plus PDFs. Before sharing a scrubbed file, open it once to confirm it still looks and reads exactly as you expect.

Metadata removal questions

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