Glossary / PDF Metadata
What Is PDF Metadata?
PDF metadata is descriptive information embedded within a PDF file, including the title, author, subject, keywords, creation date, modification date, and the software (producer) used to create it. This data is stored in the document's Info dictionary and optionally in an XMP (Extensible Metadata Platform) stream.
How metadata is stored
Per the ISO 32000-2 specification, PDF metadata lives in two places: the document Info dictionary (a legacy structure with fields like Title, Author, Subject, and CreationDate) and the XMP metadata stream (an XML-based format that supports custom namespaces and richer data). Modern PDF tools write to both locations for backward compatibility.
Privacy considerations
Metadata can unintentionally reveal sensitive information such as the author's name, the organization, the software version, or edit history. Before sharing documents publicly, it is good practice to review and strip unnecessary metadata.
Related tools on fixtdoc
- Merge PDF , combine PDFs while preserving document metadata
- Compress PDF , optimize PDFs with optional metadata removal