About Clean PDF

Clean PDF shows you everything a document carries besides its pages — author names, dates, the software that wrote it, comments, attachments, scripts and form answers — and strips whichever of them you choose.

A PDF carries more than its pages. The document information dictionary holds a title, an author, a subject, keywords, two dates and the names of the software that wrote it — none of which a reader shows you, and all of which travels with the file. That dictionary is emptied completely rather than key by key, because a document may put anything in it and plenty do: a company name, the template it came from, the path it was last saved at. Whatever the file calls them, they are listed here first.

Many documents also carry an XMP packet, which is a second, richer copy of the same thing in a different place; clearing one and leaving the other is the mistake most metadata tools make. Past that, a PDF can carry whole files inside it, and JavaScript that runs when it is opened.

Then there is what people added to the pages. A sticky note is a private remark with a name on it, a highlight carries the same name, and between them they are usually the most revealing thing in a document that has been round for review. Comments and markup are found, counted and attributed, and can be removed — as can links, and whatever was typed into a form. The form itself stays fillable; only the answers go.

Everything found is shown before anything is removed, because "we cleaned your metadata" is a promise nobody can check and "here are the nine things in this file" is one anybody can. Nothing is put back in its place — not even our own name, which every other tool here stamps on its output.