Strip hidden metadata from photos, PDFs, Office documents, video, and audio — entirely in your browser.
Photos carry GPS coordinates, device serial numbers, camera info, and timestamps. PDFs carry author names, edit history, and software fingerprints. AI-generated images carry C2PA content credentials identifying which tool made them. Videos from your phone carry GPS coordinates, device fingerprints, and per-track handler vendor IDs. Audio files carry artist tags, encoder signatures, recording-device names (ZOOM, etc.), and Broadcast Wave timestamps. MetaStrip removes all of it.
The whole tool runs client-side. Files never leave your device — there is no server, no upload, no API. You can verify it yourself: open DevTools → Network tab → drop a file → watch zero outbound requests fire.
Every other "remove metadata" tool I tried wanted me to upload my files to their server, was last updated when Ubuntu still shipped with Unity, or required installing a CLI tool with a man page. None of that felt right for a privacy tool. So I built the version I actually wanted to use.
| Category | Formats |
|---|---|
| Images | JPEG, PNG, WebP |
| Documents | PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX |
| Video | MP4, MOV, M4V |
| Audio | MP3, M4A, FLAC, WAV |
HEIC, TIFF, GIF and additional document formats (RTF, ODT, Pages) are on the roadmap.
- Photos: GPS coordinates, EXIF (camera make, model, serial, settings), IPTC, XMP, C2PA content credentials, AI generation tags, embedded thumbnails, timestamps
- PDFs: author, creator app, producer, title, subject, keywords, custom properties, timestamps
- Office docs: author, last-modified-by, company, tracked changes, comments, revision history, template metadata
- Video (MP4 / MOV / M4V): GPS coordinates (
©xyz,loci), device make/model/software, handler vendor IDs, creation and per-track timestamps, encoder fingerprints, and tool-specific metadata inudta/metaatoms. Codec parameters are deliberately preserved so playback isn't broken. - Audio (MP3 / M4A / FLAC / WAV): ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags, Vorbis comments, embedded album art, RIFF LIST/INFO chunks, Broadcast Wave (
bext) extensions, iXML metadata, and Pro Tools metadata blocks.
Steganographic watermarks (e.g. Google's SynthID) are pixel-level and not addressed by metadata removal — see the blog post on AI image detection for a full breakdown.
- Next.js (App Router, static export)
- piexifjs for JPEG EXIF
- pdf-lib for PDF metadata
- JSZip for DOCX / XLSX / PPTX (they're ZIP archives — unpack, modify XML, repack)
- Custom in-browser MP4 atom walker for video (MP4, MOV, M4V) — replaces metadata atoms with
freeatoms of identical size so file structure stays valid - Custom parsers for ID3v1/v2 (MP3), Vorbis comments (FLAC), and RIFF LIST/INFO + bext (WAV); FLAC PICTURE / VORBIS_COMMENT blocks are replaced with
PADDINGof equal size, RIFF chunks withJUNK— no length recomputation, no risk of breaking playback - PostHog for cookieless, DNT-respecting analytics
- Hosted on GitHub Pages (deployed via Actions)
No server. No tracking cookies. No accounts.
git clone https://github.com/lars-1987/metastrip.git
cd metastrip
npm install
npm run devThen http://localhost:3000.
To produce a static export:
npm run build
# output: ./out/PRs welcome — particularly:
- HEIC support (the format every iPhone now defaults to)
- Additional document formats (RTF, ODT, Pages)
- WebM / MKV / AVI video and OGG / Opus audio
- Web Worker offload so very large files don't block the main thread
- Additional metadata categories on existing formats
- Translations of the UI
Open an issue first for substantial feature work so we don't end up duplicating effort.
MIT — do whatever you want with it. If you ship a fork, an attribution to the original would be appreciated but not required.
MetaStrip is free and ad-free. If it saved you time (or stopped you from leaking your home address), I'd genuinely appreciate a coffee:
Optional. Never required. Built in Melbourne.