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About Clean PDF
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. Those are listed here under whatever the file calls them.
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 their place - not even our own name, which every other tool here stamps on its output.
Frequently asked questions about Clean PDF
- Is Clean PDF really free?
- Yes. Clean PDF is free to use with no account, no daily task limit and no paid tier holding features back. Your result is never watermarked and never held behind an email address. The only real limit is your own device, since the file has to fit in your browser's memory while it is being worked on.
- Is my document uploaded?
- Everything runs inside your browser tab. The file is read with the browser File API, processed in a Web Worker on your machine, and handed back to you as a download. It is never sent to a server.
- Does this remove the text printed on the page?
- No. Words printed on the page are part of the page - use Redact for those, which genuinely deletes them rather than covering them up. What this removes is the data around the document and the things people added on top of it: comments, highlights, links and form answers, all of which sit above the page rather than in it.
- What happens to a form I have filled in?
- Clearing the answers is offered and is off by default, since a form somebody is still working on should not be emptied by a tool they opened to strip an author name. When it is on, the values go and the form stays fillable. To make the answers permanent instead of removing them, use Flatten.
- Will removing comments change how the document looks?
- Yes, where the comment was visible - a highlight, a sticky-note icon, a drawn arrow. Those are annotations layered over the page, so taking them off restores the page underneath. The page itself is untouched, and nothing that was printed on it moves.
- Why does my file still have a Producer after cleaning?
- It should not. This is the one tool here that adds nothing back: the fields are deleted rather than overwritten, so the information dictionary comes out empty. If a field returns, it was written by whatever you opened the file in afterwards.
- What about the names of fonts, or text I deleted earlier?
- Embedded fonts carry their own names and are needed to draw the page, so they stay. Content that was deleted by another tool is gone from the page but may survive in an earlier revision if that tool saved incrementally - saving through any of the tools here rewrites the file rather than appending to it.
What people use next
Everything above happens on your device. Clean PDF opens your file in this tab, does the work here, and hands it back - nothing is uploaded, and nothing is kept once you leave.