How to remove metadata from a PDF on a Mac

A PDF carries an author name, a title (often the original filename), the software that produced it and two timestamps, all readable by anyone with Preview. To remove them on a Mac without other software, open the file in Preview, choose File, then Print, then Save as PDF from the PDF menu, and leave the Title, Author, Subject and Keywords fields in the save sheet empty. For a batch, or to keep the file exactly as it is apart from the metadata, Manatee’s Clean mode writes a cleaned copy alongside each original.

What a PDF knows about you

Every PDF has a document information dictionary with a handful of standard fields: Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, Creator (the application the document was written in, such as a word processor), Producer (the software that made the PDF), CreationDate and ModDate. Most apps fill these in automatically. The Author is typically the name the app was registered with, or your macOS account name, and the Title is frequently whatever the source document was called, including drafts with names like “final-v3-REVISED”.

Newer PDFs also carry an XMP block, a second copy of the same information in XML, sometimes with extra fields such as the original document’s unique ID and an edit history. The two copies can disagree; a tool that edits one and not the other leaves the old values visible to anyone who looks at the other.

There is also a layer of metadata that is really content: comment and annotation authors (each sticky note records who wrote it), form field values, bookmarks, attached files, and any text hidden behind a redaction box that was drawn rather than applied. Metadata removal handles the first two categories. The third needs to be handled separately, and we come back to it below.

Check what is there in Preview

1. Open the PDF in Preview.
2. Choose Tools, then Show Inspector (Command-I).
3. The General tab lists Title, Author, Subject, Creator, Producer and the dates. The Keywords tab lists any keywords.

If the Author shows your name or a colleague’s, or the Title is an internal filename, that is what a recipient sees. Preview lets you edit the keywords here but not the Author or Title, which is why the routes below exist. For a broader look at what files carry, see how to check a file’s metadata on a Mac.

Option 1: re-save through the Print dialog

Printing a PDF to a new PDF creates a fresh file, and the save sheet lets you set the metadata fields explicitly.

1. Open the PDF in Preview.
2. Choose File, then Print (Command-P).
3. In the print dialog, click the PDF button in the lower left and choose Save as PDF.
4. The save sheet shows Title, Author, Subject and Keywords fields. Clear them, or type neutral values.
5. Choose a new name and location and click Save.
6. Open the new file and check the inspector. The Producer will now show macOS’s PDF engine rather than the original application, and the Author will be whatever you typed.

The caveat is that printing is a rendering step, not a copy. Text stays selectable in most cases, but clickable links, bookmarks, form fields and attached files are usually lost, and some PDFs with unusual fonts or transparency render differently. The file size can go up or down. For a plain document of text and pictures this is fine; for a fillable form it is not.

Option 2: fix it at the source

If you made the PDF yourself, the cleanest result comes from exporting it again with the metadata already right.

• In Word for Mac, open Word, then Preferences, then Security, and turn on Remove personal information from this file on save. Save, then export to PDF with File, then Save As, choosing PDF. We cover Word’s own metadata in how to remove the author name and edit history from a Word document.
• In Pages, export with File, then Export To, then PDF, and check the result in Preview’s inspector. If the Author field is filled in, use the Print dialog route on the exported file.
• In any app, give the source document a sensible filename before exporting; the filename is what usually ends up in Title.

This approach keeps links and forms intact, because the application builds the PDF correctly rather than re-rendering an existing one.

Option 3: clean a copy with Manatee

Manatee’s Clean mode strips author and revision metadata from documents, including PDFs, and writes a cleaned copy alongside the original without altering the original.

1. Drag the PDF (or a folder’s worth of PDFs) onto the Manatee window or its menu bar icon, or right-click in the Finder and choose Fix with Manatee.
2. Choose Clean.
3. The cleaned copies appear next to the originals; check one in Preview’s inspector.

This is the better fit when you want the document itself left alone, or when there are thirty of them. Everything runs on the Mac with no upload and no account, which matters for exactly the sort of document where you are worrying about metadata in the first place.

Two things Manatee’s Clean mode does not do. It does not redact: a name typed in the letterhead, in a footer, or in the body text is content, not metadata, and it stays. And it will not open a password-protected PDF; remove the password in Preview first if you know it (File, then Export, with the encryption box unchecked).

What metadata removal does not cover

It is worth being precise, because a clean inspector can give false confidence.

• Annotations and comments carry their author’s name inside each annotation. Delete them in Preview (select the note and press Delete) or flatten the file through the Print dialog, which turns them into static marks.
• Drawn-over redactions in Preview are shapes on top of text; the text underneath is still selectable and searchable. Use the Redact tool in Preview (Tools, then Redact, on macOS 11 and later), which removes the content, and then save a copy.
• Scanned documents can have an OCR text layer containing everything on the page, including a name and address on a letterhead, even if you cropped the visible image.
• Attached files and embedded fonts can carry their own metadata. Attachments show in Preview’s sidebar; remove them before sharing.
• The filename is metadata too, in the sense that matters. “Offer letter, DRAFT, lower figure.pdf” tells a story before anyone opens it.

For documents going to a lawyer, a journalist, or anyone where the stakes are real, see sending documents to a journalist or lawyer: clean the metadata first.

Questions

Does Preview’s Export remove metadata?

File, then Export in Preview rewrites the PDF but keeps the document information, including the Author. Use the Print dialog route, the source application, or Manatee instead.

Will the Print dialog route reduce quality?

For text and vector graphics, no: they are re-rendered as text and vectors. Pictures inside the PDF may be resampled depending on the print settings. If the PDF is image-heavy, compare a page from each version at high zoom.

Can I see the XMP metadata, not just the basic fields?

Preview shows the document information fields only. Opening the PDF in a plain text editor and searching for xmpmeta shows the raw XMP block if one exists; it is readable XML. If it is there and the basic fields are clean, the XMP still needs to go, which is a reason to prefer a method that writes a fresh file.