To edit PDF metadata, open the file in OpenPdfEdit and choose Properties. Change the title, author, subject or keywords and press Save properties. It runs on your own machine, free, with nothing uploaded.
Open the document in a browser tab, in the desktop app for macOS and Windows, or through the browser extension. In Read or Edit mode, choose Properties. The panel shows four fields you can change: Title, Author, Subject and Keywords, with keywords separated by commas.
Change what you need and press Save properties. The button stays greyed out until something has actually changed, so you cannot write the same values back by accident. Then save the document. To edit PDF metadata on several files, repeat this for each one.
Under the four fields, the panel lists what the file says about itself and you cannot type over: when it was created and last modified, the application it was made in, the PDF producer, the number of pages, the file size, the PDF version, and whether it is password protected.
That makes it a quick way to check a document before you send it, even when you do not plan to edit PDF metadata at all: an author name from a template, or a title left over from an earlier draft, shows up here.
A PDF keeps its title, author, subject and keywords in two places: the older Info dictionary, and, in most files written this century, an XMP packet as well. Different readers believe different ones. When you edit PDF metadata here, both are written, so the title a reader shows does not depend on which of the two it trusts.
Reading works the same way round: if the Info dictionary lacks a value that the XMP packet has, the panel shows the packet’s. And if a packet cannot be edited safely, it is unlinked rather than left behind contradicting the new values. Every save of the properties also moves the modified date, because a document changed today should not still say it was last modified years ago.
This is for setting the four properties a person writes. It is not a tool to strip every trace from a file: the application, the producer and the creation date are shown, not erased. If you need a PDF clean of all its metadata, this page is not the answer, and we would rather say so here.
Also worth knowing: like every ordinary edit in this app, the change is saved as a new revision at the end of the file, so the earlier values are still in its bytes. That is fine for correcting a title or adding an author. It is not a way to hide what the old title said.
Properties is free in all three versions, with no sign-in. It is not one of the paid tools. Nothing is uploaded: the web app does the work in the page itself, and the desktop app works offline.
OpenPdfEdit is an open source PDF editor, so the code that reads and writes these properties is public, including how it keeps the Info dictionary and the XMP packet in step.
Open the file, choose Properties, change the fields, save. Nothing to install, nothing to sign up for.
Guides: Two ways to save a PDF · All guides
No. You can edit PDF metadata fields a person writes, the title, author, subject and keywords. The application, producer and creation date are shown but not removed, so this is not a tool for stripping a file clean.
Yes. The new values are written to both the Info dictionary and the XMP packet, so every reader sees the same title and author. A packet that cannot be edited safely is unlinked rather than left contradicting the new values.
Yes. Every save of the properties updates the modified date to the time of the edit.