PixWash
A PDF usually names its author and the software that made it — and keeps old revisions alive. See what yours reveals and download a clean copy. Nothing is uploaded.
Private by design: the photo is read and cleaned entirely in your browser. It is never uploaded anywhere — you can even load this page, go offline, and it still works.
PDFs are signed by their tools — and often by you
Nearly every PDF carries a document-info dictionary: Title, Author (very often the real name or login of whoever installed the office suite), Creator and Producer (the exact software and version), and creation/modification timestamps. Most also embed an XMP packet repeating the same facts in XML. The sample loaded above is a typical office-suite export — the findings table shows its author, tool and dates the moment the page loads.
Where this actually bites
Résumés and cover letters carry a spouse's name or an old name after a rename. "Anonymous" complaint letters name their author. Bids and proposals reveal which consultant really wrote them, and when — a 3 a.m. ModDate the night before the deadline tells its own story. Documents shared for review leak the whole chain of tools. None of this is visible in a PDF viewer; all of it is in the file.
How PixWash cleans a PDF
It reads the file's bytes in your browser and wipes the metadata in place: every value in the document-info dictionary is overwritten with blanks, and each XMP packet is replaced with an empty, spec-valid one. Nothing is re-arranged — page content, layout, fonts and images are byte-for-byte untouched, so the cleaned PDF opens everywhere the original did. Because PDFs are often saved incrementally (each save appends a new revision, leaving the old one readable inside the file), PixWash wipes the info dictionaries of every revision, not just the latest — and it removes any bytes hiding after the file's end-of-file marker.
Honest limits
Some writers store the info dictionary inside a compressed object stream; PixWash detects and reports that but can't wipe it in place — re-saving the document (for example with your viewer's "print to PDF") drops it. Earlier-revision page content from incremental saves is reported but stays; only a full re-save removes it. Embedded file attachments are flagged, not removed — they can carry their own metadata. Wiping bytes breaks any digital signature, so PixWash tells you when one is present. And password-protected PDFs can't be read at all — their strings are encrypted. Each of these is stated in the findings table when it applies, before you download anything.
PDFs from scans and phones
A PDF made by scanning or "save as PDF" from a phone camera app can contain a JPEG that still carries its own EXIF — including GPS. PixWash flags what it can see at the PDF level; if you have the original photo, clean it here first (drop it on this page — JPEG and HEIC work directly), then make the PDF from the clean copy.
Common tasks
Guides for the usual reasons people end up here — each opens the tool with a live demo:
Remove GPS location from photos · Remove location from iPhone photos (HEIC) · Remove EXIF data from a JPEG · Remove EXIF from HEIC photos · View EXIF data online · Strip EXIF without losing image quality · Remove metadata from a PNG · Remove EXIF & XMP metadata from a WebP image · Remove metadata from an AVIF image · Remove metadata from a TIFF · Remove metadata from DNG raw files · Remove metadata from camera raw files (CR2, NEF, ARW, ORF, RW2, PEF, RAF) · Remove metadata from a PDF · Clean photos before selling online · Your camera’s serial number is in your photos
По-русски
Удалить метаданные (EXIF) из фото — по-русски · убрать геолокацию (GPS) с фото · удалить EXIF из JPEG · фото iPhone (HEIC) · посмотреть EXIF онлайн · метаданные PDF