How to remove metadata from audio files on a Mac

Q: Can I remove metadata from a batch of audio files?

With ffmpeg, a Terminal loop handles a folder: for f in .mp3; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -mapmetadata -1 -c copy "clean$f"; done. The Music app can edit shared fields for several selected tracks at once through Get Info, but only the fields it shows.

23 August 2026 · 6 min read

Audio metadata lives in tags: ID3 tags in an MP3, atoms in an M4A, chunks in a WAV or AIFF. On a Mac you can edit or blank the common ones in the Music app (select a track, press Command-I), and you can strip every tag at once with ffmpeg in Terminal using -map_metadata -1 -c copy, which rewrites the file without re-encoding the sound. Check the result with mdls or ffprobe afterward, because some tags hide in places a tag editor does not show.

What an audio file can carry

The tags most people know are title, artist, album, year, genre, track number, and the embedded cover art. The ones that matter for privacy are the others:

Comments and description fields. Free text that recording software, podcast tools, and people fill in. A voice memo exported from a phone can carry the recording’s name, which some apps generate from your location (“Kitchen”, a street name, a business).
Encoder and software. The name and version of whatever made the file, sometimes with the operating system.
Purchaser information. Tracks bought from an online music store can contain the buyer’s account name and email address in the file’s tags. This is the one that surprises people when they share a purchased track.
Recording date and time. Field recorders and voice memo apps write precise timestamps.
Artwork. Embedded JPEG or PNG art is an image with its own EXIF, which can include a location if it was a phone photo.
Lyrics, copyright, and URL fields. Less common but present in some files.

A WAV file has fewer standard fields, but many tools write a LIST INFO chunk with software and date, and some write a bext chunk with the originator and a timestamp. AIFF files can carry similar chunks. FLAC and OGG use Vorbis comments, which are free-form key-value pairs and can hold anything.

See what is in a file

In Finder, select the file and press Command-I. The More Info section shows title, artist, album, duration, and sometimes the encoder.
For a fuller list, open Terminal, type mdls with a trailing space, drag the file in, and press Return. Look for kMDItemComment, kMDItemEncodingApplications, kMDItemRecordingDate, kMDItemAuthors, and kMDItemComposer.
If ffmpeg is installed, ffprobe followed by the file path prints every tag the file has, including nonstandard ones that Finder does not index.

The third option is the only one that shows everything. Finder and mdls display what Spotlight’s importer chose to extract, which covers the standard tags and skips the odd ones.

Edit or blank tags in the Music app

For a handful of files and the standard fields, the Music app is the built-in editor.

Open Music and choose File > Import to add the file. (Music copies it into the library by default; the original on disk is untouched.)
Select the track and press Command-I.
Work through the Details, Artwork, Lyrics, and Options tabs. Clear the comments field, the composer, the grouping, and anything else you do not want in the file. Remove the artwork if it was a phone photo.
Click OK. Music writes the tags back into the file in its library.
To get the file out, drag the track from Music to a Finder window. That copies the file with its edited tags.

Music edits the fields it knows about. It does not show encoder strings, bext chunks, or nonstandard tags, and it cannot blank the purchaser fields in a store-bought track. For those, use the next method.

Strip every tag with ffmpeg

If ffmpeg is installed, one command removes all tags without touching the audio data:

ffmpeg -i input.mp3 -map_metadata -1 -c copy output.mp3

-map_metadata -1 drops every global tag. -c copy copies the audio stream as-is, so there is no re-encoding and no quality loss. The same command works for M4A, FLAC, WAV, and AIFF; change the extensions.

For an MP3 with embedded artwork, add -vn to drop the image stream:

ffmpeg -i input.mp3 -map_metadata -1 -vn -c copy output.mp3

For an M4A, the artwork is stored as a tag rather than a stream, so -map_metadata -1 alone removes it.

Check the result:

ffprobe output.mp3

The Metadata block should be gone or reduced to an encoder line that ffmpeg itself writes. To suppress even that, add -fflags +bitexact before the output filename.

Two limits. -c copy cannot fix a tag that is stored inside the audio stream itself, which is rare but happens with some WAV files written by recorders; for those, re-encoding to a fresh file is the only route. And ffmpeg leaves the filename alone, which may be the most revealing part of a voice memo.

Converting and cleaning in one step

If you are changing the format anyway, a conversion is a chance to leave the tags behind, but only if the converter is told to. Some converters copy tags across deliberately, because for music that is what people want. Check the output with ffprobe or mdls rather than assuming.

Manatee can convert audio to MP3, M4A, WAV, or FLAC on the Mac with nothing uploaded, and it accepts MP3, M4A, AAC, WAV, AIFF, FLAC, OGG, Opus, WMA, AMR, CAF, and most other audio formats as input. Its Clean mode, though, is built for photos and documents: it strips GPS, camera EXIF, and document author and revision metadata. It is not an audio tag editor, so after a conversion, check the output’s tags with mdls and blank anything that remains using the Music app or ffmpeg as above. The posts on how-to-convert-m4a-to-mp3-on-a-mac.html and how-to-convert-wav-to-mp3-on-a-mac.html cover the conversion side.

The filename and the content

Tags are one layer. A voice memo called Meeting with landlord 14 Aug.m4a gives away more than any tag, and so does the recording itself if someone says a name or a date in it. Rename before sharing, and listen through a recording you are about to publish.

If the file was downloaded, Finder may also have recorded its source URL in kMDItemWhereFroms, an extended attribute that sits beside the file rather than inside it. It does not travel by email or upload; it can travel by AirDrop or inside a Finder-made zip.

Questions

Does converting an MP3 to WAV remove the tags?

Often but not always. WAV has fewer standard fields, so many converters drop most tags, but some write title and artist into the LIST INFO chunk. Check with ffprobe or mdls after converting.

Will removing metadata change how the track sounds?

No, provided the tool copies the audio stream rather than re-encoding it. ffmpeg’s -c copy does that. The Music app edits tags in place without touching the audio.

Can I remove metadata from a batch of audio files?

With ffmpeg, a Terminal loop handles a folder: for f in *.mp3; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -map_metadata -1 -c copy "clean_$f"; done. The Music app can edit shared fields for several selected tracks at once through Get Info, but only the fields it shows.

Can Manatee strip audio tags?

No. Its Clean mode targets photos, PDFs, and Word documents. It converts audio between formats on the Mac, but treat the tags on the output as something to verify, not something it has cleaned.