What it does
Every file your phone, camera or office software produces carries a second layer of information that you never see on screen. A photo can hold the exact GPS coordinates where it was taken, the time down to the second, the make and model of your device and the app that edited it. A PDF can record its author's name, the machine's software, the creation and modification dates and a full XMP packet describing its history.
This tool finds that hidden layer, lists it in plain language, writes a clean copy with it removed and then scans the clean copy again so you can see the "After" column is empty. Fields that are especially revealing, such as location, dates, device names and authors, are highlighted so they are easy to spot.
How it works
Images: re-encoding through a canvas
Metadata lives in side-sections of an image file: EXIF and XMP segments in a JPEG, eXIf and tEXt/iTXt chunks in a PNG, EXIF and XMP chunks in a WebP. Rather than trying to cut each one out and risk missing a vendor-specific block, we take the more reliable route: your browser decodes the picture into raw pixels, we paint those pixels onto an HTML canvas, and the canvas encodes a brand-new file. A canvas only knows about pixels, so there is physically nowhere for the old metadata to survive. Orientation is applied while decoding, so the picture still appears the right way up.
PDFs: removing the info dictionary and XMP with pdf-lib
A PDF stores its document properties in an Info dictionary and, usually, in a separate XMP metadata stream attached to the catalog. We load the file with pdf-lib (bundled into this site), delete the Info dictionary, delete every metadata stream and PieceInfo entry, and also delete the underlying objects so nothing is left orphaned in the file. The document is then written out fresh. Pages, text, fonts, images and links are untouched.
Before and after
For the "Before" and "After" lists we read the file's structure directly: we walk JPEG markers, PNG chunks and WebP chunks, parse the EXIF tables, decode the PDF Info dictionary and read the XMP packets. Because the same scanner inspects both versions, the comparison is honest.
A worked example
Say you want to sell a bike and have a photo, bike.jpg, taken in your driveway. Dropped into the tool, the "Before" column might read:
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Make / Model | A phone manufacturer and handset name |
| DateTimeOriginal | 2026-03-14 09:41:07 |
| GPS position | Latitude and longitude accurate to a few metres, which is your home address |
| Software | The phone's OS version, or the editing app |
| LensModel | The camera module used |
After processing, "After" says Nothing left to find. The bike looks identical to a buyer, but they can no longer read your location out of the file. The same flow works for a PDF: drop in proposal.pdf, see Author, Creator, Producer and dates in the list, and download a copy with all of them gone.
Limits you should know about
- JPEG and WebP are recompressed. Re-encoding is lossy. At the default quality of 0.92 the difference is invisible for most photos, but it is not a bit-for-bit copy. PNG output is lossless.
- Colour profiles are dropped. Canvas output is sRGB. Photos shot in a wide-gamut space may look slightly less saturated.
- Animations are flattened. Only the first frame of an animated PNG or WebP is kept.
- Visible content is not touched. A street sign, a face, a watermark or a name in the picture stays. Metadata removal is not redaction. For that, use the PDF redaction tool.
- PDFs may hold identifying data elsewhere. Annotation and comment authors, embedded file attachments, form-field values and the visible text can all identify you. Digital signatures are invalidated by any change.
- Encrypted PDFs aren't supported. Remove the password first.
- HEIC and other formats aren't handled here. Convert HEIC with our HEIC to JPG tool, which also drops its metadata.
- Very large images can exceed what your browser's canvas allows. If that happens you will see an error rather than a corrupt file.
Verify there are no uploads
You shouldn't have to take our word for it. This page is built so you can check in under a minute:
- Open your browser's developer tools (
F12, or⌥⌘Ion a Mac) and switch to the Network tab. - Tick Preserve log, then click the clear (🚫) button so the list is empty.
- Add your file and run the tool.
- Look at the list. You will see nothing new: no
POST, noPUT, no calls to any other domain. Your file is read from disk into memory and handed to code that was already loaded with this page. - For a stronger test, switch the Network tab's throttling to Offline (or turn on airplane mode) after the page has loaded, and use the tool again. It keeps working, because it never needed the network.
Here the check is especially easy: the file picker never creates a request, and the clean file is created as a local blob: link. Every library is bundled into this site and served from the same domain. There are no CDNs, analytics scripts, fonts or trackers. Our full guide to verifying uploads covers Chrome, Firefox and Safari.
Frequently asked questions
Is my file uploaded anywhere?
No. The page contains all the code it needs. Your file is read into your browser's memory, processed there and handed back as a download. You can confirm this in the Network tab, or by going offline after the page has loaded.
Does removing EXIF change how the photo looks?
No visible change besides a tiny amount of JPEG recompression. The rotation is baked into the pixels so the photo still appears upright.
Why re-encode instead of just deleting the EXIF block?
Cutting blocks out of a file works until a camera or editor stores something in a place you did not expect. Redrawing the pixels means nothing but pixels can come out the other side. The cost is recompression for JPEG and WebP.
Do social networks already strip metadata?
Some do on public posts, but practices differ and change over time, and many messaging apps send the original file when you attach it as a document. It is safer to clean the file yourself before you share it.
What about the file name?
The output is named with a -clean suffix. If your original name contains something private, rename the download before sharing.
Will it work offline?
Yes. After the page has loaded once, nothing else is requested, so it keeps working without a connection.
Does it remove metadata from videos or Office documents?
Not yet. This tool handles JPG, PNG, WebP and PDF.