Remove Hidden File Metadata
Remove the date taken, location, author name and other hidden details from photos, PDFs and Office files before you share them.
Hidden informationReview it before removing
If you uncheck "Keep photo orientation", portrait photos taken on a phone may appear sideways. If you uncheck "Keep color profile", colors may look different.
What this tool does
HANEClean is a free metadata remover that deletes information hidden inside your files — EXIF data in photos, document properties in PDFs and Office files. No installation and no sign-up. Everything runs inside your browser, and your files are never uploaded or stored on a server.
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📍Remove GPS location
Photos taken on a phone often contain the latitude and longitude where they were taken. Send a photo from your home or a client's site as-is and you share the location too.
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👤Remove author and company names
Word, Excel and PowerPoint files keep the author, last saved by, company name and revision count. A reused document can reveal who it was originally made for.
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🔍See it before you remove it
A list shows exactly what is stored, so you can see what would actually leak before removing it.
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✨No loss in image quality
Photos are not re-encoded — only the metadata is cut out, so quality never changes no matter how often you run it.
Supported formats: JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF, PDF, Word (.docx), Excel (.xlsx) and PowerPoint (.pptx). For HEIC (iPhone photos), convert them to JPEG with HANEConv first.
How to use it (3 steps)
- Add filesDrag them into the box or click "Choose files". You can add several at once.
- ReviewThe date taken, location, author name and more are listed. Location data is highlighted.
- CleanPress "Clean & save" to download the cleaned files. Two or more files are bundled into a ZIP.
When it comes in handy
Sending on-site photos to people outside your company
Remove the GPS location and date taken before sending.
Photos taken with location services on record latitude and longitude accurate to a few meters. Anyone who receives the photo can show that spot on a map with free software. Sending photos of vehicles or property as-is can reveal where they are kept.
Reusing an old document
Remove the author, company name and revision count from Office files.
Word file properties keep the "Author", "Last saved by" and "Company". Reuse a proposal made for another client and it may arrive with the previous contact's name still inside. Total editing time is recorded too, which can reveal that a document took only ten minutes to make.
Publishing or distributing a PDF
Remove document properties (title, author, software used) and XMP data.
A PDF keeps the author name from the original Word file and the name and version of the software used, which tells outsiders about your internal software setup. Note that this tool removes document properties; it does not hide text in the body. To black out text in the document itself, use HANEMask.
What does "Keep photo orientation" do?
It stops portrait photos from turning sideways.
Phone photos are actually stored in landscape, with an instruction in the EXIF data (Orientation) saying "rotate 90° when displaying". Remove that instruction and the photo lies on its side. With this option on, photos that carry the instruction are physically rotated before saving. Only in this case is the image re-encoded, so quality drops very slightly. Affected photos are flagged in the list.
This tool removes metadata stored in common formats. We do not guarantee removal from every format or of every item. Information embedded in proprietary ways by specialized editing software, or written as text in the body, is not removed. Always keep a copy of important files before use. We accept no liability for any damage resulting from use of this tool. For details, see our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.