Remove hidden metadata.
Nothing leaves your device.

Photos carry your GPS location; PDFs and Office files carry your name and company. NearScrub strips it out — right in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server.

Drop files here
or

or press Ctrl+V to paste

→ 0 files sent to a server · everything runs on your device

Why remove metadata before sharing?

A single photo can reveal exactly where it was taken; an exported PDF or Word file can carry the author's name, company, and revision history. NearScrub removes EXIF/GPS, PDF document properties, and Office author data locally, so nothing sensitive travels with your file.

Is there a file size limit?

Desktop browsers can handle larger files; on mobile we apply a conservative limit to prevent crashes on lower-memory devices.

Do I need to create an account?

No. NearScrub works with zero sign-up, for unlimited use.

Does it work offline?

Once the page is loaded, all processing happens locally in your browser.

How NearScrub works

  1. Choose your files — drag them onto this page, pick them with the file browser, or paste with Ctrl+V. JPEG and PNG images, PDFs, and Office documents (docx, xlsx, pptx) are supported.
  2. Local scan — a background worker on your own device parses each file's structure and locates the metadata it carries. Nothing is uploaded; the scan runs entirely in your browser's memory.
  3. Review the report — before anything is changed, you see exactly what was found in each file: EXIF/GPS location, XMP, IPTC/Photoshop data, comments, PDF document info, Office author fields.
  4. Download the clean copy — NearScrub rewrites each file without the flagged metadata and hands it straight back as a download. The original on your device is never modified.

What exactly gets removed, format by format

JPEG photos: the EXIF segment (GPS coordinates, capture time, camera make and model), XMP and IPTC/Photoshop blocks, and embedded comments are all dropped. The operation is lossless — pixel data is copied byte for byte, so image quality is untouched. One deliberate exception: the orientation flag is re-inserted as a minimal, privacy-free tag so portrait photos don't come out sideways.

PNG images: text and metadata chunks (tEXt, zTXt, iTXt), embedded EXIF, and the last-modified timestamp are removed, again without recompressing the image. PDFs: the document info fields — Title, Author, Subject, Keywords, Creator, Producer, and the creation/modification dates — are cleared, and the XMP metadata stream is deleted.

Office documents (docx, xlsx, pptx): the document-properties parts are blanked — author, last-modified-by, company, manager, and any custom properties — while the document content itself stays exactly as it was.

Two honest limitations. Cleaned files are rewritten, so their checksum (hash) will differ from the original even though the visible content is identical. And NearScrub currently covers JPEG, PNG, PDF, and Office files only — HEIC photos and video files are not yet supported.