Edit PDF Metadata & Document Details
Change PDF document details — Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, and Creator — without Adobe Acrobat.
How to edit PDF metadata — 3 steps
- 1
Add your PDF
Drop the document in and its current properties are read out of the file, so you can see what it is actually carrying before changing anything.
- 2
Edit the fields
Update the title, author, subject, and keywords. Clear any field you would rather leave empty — a blank value is often the right answer before sharing.
- 3
Download the updated PDF
The properties are rewritten and the document itself is untouched: same pages, same text, same images, same file structure.
Where this metadata shows up
The title field does more work than most people realise, because it is not just a note inside the file. Open a PDF in a browser and the tab shows the title, not the filename — which is why so many documents appear online as 'Microsoft Word - final_v3_REVISED.docx'. That string was inherited from the file the PDF was exported from, and it now labels the document everywhere it is displayed.
It propagates further than the tab. Search engines use the title when listing a PDF in results, document management systems index and sort on it, reference managers read it when cataloguing a paper, and email clients and messaging apps often show it when previewing an attachment. A document called 'Untitled' or 'Doc1' looks careless in all of those places, and the fix takes seconds.
The remaining fields serve retrieval. Author records who is responsible for the document, subject gives a one-line description, and keywords supply terms that search tools can match against even when those words do not appear in the text. On a handful of files that is housekeeping; across a shared drive holding thousands of documents it is the difference between finding something and not.
The information you did not know you were sending
Metadata is generated automatically, and it records more than most senders expect. A PDF typically carries the name of the person whose software created it, the application and version used, the original document title — often an internal filename that reveals a draft history — and creation and modification timestamps. None of this is visible on the page, and all of it travels with the file.
The consequences are ordinary rather than exotic. A CV exported from a template still names the template's author. A quotation sent to a customer carries an internal project codename in its title. A document circulated as a fresh proposal shows a creation date from months earlier, or a title ending 'draft_for_legal'. Anyone can see these in a few clicks — File, then Properties, in any reader — and journalists and opposing parties look there as a matter of routine.
So it is worth a glance at the properties before any document goes outside your organisation. Set the title to something meaningful, set or clear the author, and remove anything descriptive that was never intended for the recipient. Where you want none of it retained at all, strip the metadata entirely rather than overwriting field by field.
Your files never leave your device
The document is read and rewritten in your browser, so a file you are cleaning up precisely because it contains information you do not want disclosed is never uploaded in order to have that information removed.
Most online PDF sites upload your document to their servers, process it there, and keep a copy for minutes, hours, or longer. PilotPDF works differently: the page downloads a small processing engine into your browser, and your file is opened and edited in your device's memory using WebAssembly. Nothing is transmitted, so there is nothing for a server to store, leak, or scan. You can even disconnect from the internet after the page loads and the tool keeps working.
Read more about how this works in our privacy-by-design explainer.