Use the free PDF Metadata Editor below: choose a PDF, adjust the settings, and download your edited PDF. Your PDF never leaves your browser — all processing happens on your device, and nothing is uploaded to any server.
What Is PDF Metadata?
Every PDF carries hidden details called metadata: a title, an author, a subject, keywords, and the names of the programs that created it. You rarely see this information, but it matters. Search engines read it. Document systems sort by it. When you open a PDF and your reader shows a title in the tab, that title comes from the metadata, not from the file name.
The problem is that metadata is often wrong. A PDF exported from a word processor may carry the author’s private name, a draft title, or the name of a template nobody remembers. A scanned document may carry no title at all, so it shows up as a meaningless file name. The PDF Metadata Editor on this page fixes all of that in your browser, free, with no sign-up. Your PDF never leaves your device.
How the Tool Works
The tool uses pdf-lib, a well-known JavaScript library that reads and writes PDFs entirely in the browser. When you choose a PDF, it loads the file and reads whatever metadata is already there, filling in the form fields so you can see the current values. You edit the fields you want to change and press save. The tool writes a new PDF with the updated metadata and downloads it. The pages themselves are untouched: only the hidden details change.
You can set the title, author, subject, keywords, creator and producer. Keywords are stored as a list, so you enter them separated by commas and the tool splits them for you. Empty fields are saved as empty, which is useful when you want to strip a personal name out of a document before sharing it.
Why Fix Metadata Before Sharing
The most common reason is privacy. A report written by a team may carry one person’s name as the author, and that name travels with the file wherever it goes. A student submitting an essay may not want their full name embedded in the file. A business sharing a price list may not want a draft title like “prices FINAL v7” visible to clients. Editing the metadata takes ten seconds and removes all of those leaks.
The second reason is findability. A PDF titled “Document” is hard to find later, both for you and for search engines. A clear title like “2026 Office Safety Guide” is easy to find and looks professional when someone opens it. If you publish PDFs on a website, good metadata also helps search engines understand and rank them, which is a small but real advantage.
How to Edit Metadata
Choose a PDF and wait a moment for the current values to appear. Change the title to something descriptive. Set the author to a name, a team or an organisation, or clear it if you prefer anonymity. Add a subject line that summarises the document in one sentence. Add keywords that someone might search for: topic words, not whole sentences. Then save and download the new file.
Check the result by opening the downloaded PDF and looking at its document properties in your reader. The new values should be there, and the pages should look exactly as before. If a field still shows an old value, your reader may be caching the old file: close it fully and reopen the downloaded copy.
What Metadata Cannot Do
Editing metadata does not change the visible content of a PDF. If your name appears in the text of the first page, it will still be there. If a scanned page contains a handwritten name, metadata editing will not remove it. For those cases you need to edit the document itself before exporting. Metadata editing also does not remove hidden revision history in files that were converted from other formats, though a PDF exported cleanly rarely carries such history.
It is also worth knowing that some readers ignore metadata and show the file name instead. That is a reader choice, not a fault in your file. The metadata is still there for search engines and document systems that do read it.
Privacy
Your PDF never leaves your browser. The pdf-lib processing happens entirely on your own device. Nothing is uploaded to a server, nothing is stored, and no account is needed.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will editing metadata change my pages? No. Only the hidden title, author and related fields change. The visible pages stay identical.
Can I remove the author completely? Yes. Clear the author field and save. The new file will have no author stored.
Does this work on scanned PDFs? Yes. Metadata lives in the file structure, not in the scanned image, so it works on any PDF.