Metadata Cleaner is a graphical application for inspecting and removing potentially sensitive metadata from files. Photographs, office documents, PDFs and other files can contain hidden information such as author names, timestamps, camera details and location coordinates. This information may be useful when files are created but undesirable when they are shared with other people. Metadata Cleaner provides a straightforward way to examine these details and remove as much unwanted metadata as possible.
The application uses mat2 as its underlying metadata-cleaning engine, providing access to its file-format handling without requiring users to work directly with command-line arguments. Files can be selected through the graphical interface, inspected and processed to produce cleaned copies. The interface is particularly suited to people who want a simple privacy tool for occasional file sharing or for processing collections of documents and images.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Inspect embedded metadata in supported files.
- Remove potentially sensitive metadata through a graphical interface.
- Display detected metadata before cleaning files.
- Process multiple files in a single operation.
- Support common image formats including JPEG, PNG, TIFF and WebP.
- Clean metadata from PDF documents.
- Process supported office documents and spreadsheets.
- Support archives and additional formats handled by mat2.
- Remove author information, timestamps, location details and other detectable metadata.
- Use the mat2 metadata anonymisation engine for file processing.
- Provide a GTK interface designed for Linux desktops.
- Allow files to be selected through the graphical file chooser.
- Display processing results and report errors when files cannot be cleaned.
Website: gitlab.com/metadatacleaner/metadatacleaner
Support:
Developer: Romain Vigier and contributors
License: GNU General Public License v3.0
Metadata Cleaner is written in Python. Learn Python with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Photo Metadata Editors | |
|---|---|
| Photini | Easy to use digital photograph metadata editor |
| ExifTool | CLI application and library for reading and writing meta information |
| Exiv2 | C++ library and a command line utility to manage image metadata |
| digiKam | Provides tools for viewing and editing metadata |
| jExifToolGUI | Graphical frontend to ExifTool |
| Jhead | Exif Jpeg header manipulation tool |
| Scramble | Privacy-focused image metadata removal tool |
| Phatch | Simple to use cross-platform GUI photo batch processor |
| mat2 | Remove metadata from files to improve privacy |
| Metadata Cleaner | Inspect and remove metadata from files |
| Kleaner | Clean metadata from images with a simple graphical interface |
| Metamorphosis | Inspect and change embedded metadata |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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