Remove metadata online — photos, PDF, video & Office

Why people remove metadata before sharing

People remove metadata before sharing because photos, PDFs, videos and Office files can carry hidden GPS coordinates, camera EXIF, author names, edit dates, comments and tracked revisions, and DropMeta strips those common fields from JPEG, PNG, HEIC, WebP, GIF, BMP, PDF, MP4, MOV, DOCX, XLSX and PPTX files inside your browser without uploading them. Photos, PDFs, videos and Office files often carry more than the content you meant to send. A JPEG from a phone can embed GPS coordinates and camera EXIF. A PDF can still list the author, creator tool and edit dates in its Info dictionary. A Word or Excel file can keep comments and revision marks. None of that is always visible in a quick preview — but it can travel with the file when you email, upload or publish.

DropMeta exists for that gap: strip common hidden fields in this browser tab, then download a cleaner copy. You do not create an account. We do not upload your files. The strip runs client-side so private work stays on your device.

That is different from many “online metadata removers” that ask you to trust a server. If your file is sensitive — client photos, unpublished drafts, location-tagged travel shots — processing on-device is the safer default. For a side-by-side of client-side vs upload tools, see Client-side vs upload metadata removers.

What DropMeta strips (by file type)

DropMeta strips GPS and EXIF/XMP from six image formats, the Info dictionary (author, title, subject, keywords, creator, producer, dates) and XMP from PDFs, metadata boxes and timestamps from MP4/MOV, and document properties, comments and tracked changes from DOCX, XLSX and PPTX, all locally in your browser. Images. JPEG, PNG, HEIC, WebP, GIF and BMP. We strip GPS and common EXIF/XMP. On JPEG, a normal strip does not recompress pixels — useful when you want to remove EXIF without a quality hit. HEIC tries an in-place strip that keeps .heic; if that cannot finish cleanly, we convert to JPEG at quality 0.95 and warn you. Before download we re-parse and block if location data still remains. Dedicated flow: Remove metadata from images.

PDF. Author, title, creator, producer and dates, plus Catalog XMP when present. If XMP cannot be removed cleanly, we error and block download instead of shipping a half-cleaned file. Encrypted PDFs are rejected — we never unlock or ignore encryption. Dedicated flow: Remove PDF metadata online.

Video (brief). MP4 and MOV up to 100MB, metadata strip without re-encoding so you do not pay an extra encode pass for a privacy clean.

Office (brief). DOCX, XLSX and PPTX — document properties plus comments and revisions where the format allows, still in-browser.

Batch mode covers photos and PDFs only (up to the UI limit), downloaded as a ZIP when you process several at once.

Honest limits (read before you rely on a strip)

DropMeta removes the common privacy fields it targets in each format and blocks the download when its re-check still finds image metadata or PDF Catalog XMP, but it is not a forensic wipe: it rejects encrypted PDFs and fragmented MP4, skips some embedded image types in Office files, and never redacts visible content. DropMeta is built for everyday privacy cleanup, not a forensic guarantee that every proprietary byte in every container is gone. Formats differ. Some edge cases fail closed (blocked download) rather than “success with leftovers.” Re-parse after strip is part of the design for images (location residue) and PDFs (Catalog XMP). Details: Why verify after stripping metadata.

If you need huge format coverage, scripting or automation on disk, a CLI like ExifTool may still be the better tool. DropMeta complements that world with a guided browser UI and no install — comparison: DropMeta vs ExifTool.

How to use DropMeta in three steps

To use DropMeta, drop or choose a supported photo, PDF, video or Office file, run strip in the same browser tab, and download the cleaned copy; nothing is uploaded, no account is needed, and if verification fails the download is blocked with an error instead of a partially cleaned file.

1. Drop, click or paste a supported file on this page (or open the Image / PDF / Video / Office tool for that type).
2. Run strip. Processing stays in this tab — watch your network panel if you want proof of no upload.
3. Download the cleaned file. If verification fails, download is blocked and you see an error instead of a false clean.

No signup wall. No “free trial” that later asks for payment to download. The product promise is simple: free, client-side, no account, no upload.