Private file cleaning, built to be simple.
CleanFile removes hidden metadata from files directly in your browser, so you can share documents, photos, audio, and video with less risk.
Why CleanFile exists
Files often contain more than their visible content. Photos can include location data, Office files can include author names and company details, and media files can expose software, devices, and timestamps. Most people are completely unaware of how much personal information is embedded in the files they share every day.
CleanFile was built to solve that problem with a straightforward workflow: detect metadata, show what is present, and remove it locally without sending your files to a server. We believe privacy tools should be accessible to everyone, which is why CleanFile is free, requires no account, and works entirely in your browser.
Our mission
We believe that everyone deserves control over the personal information embedded in their files. Our mission is to make metadata awareness and removal accessible to anyone — regardless of technical skill — so that sharing files online does not compromise your privacy.
Digital privacy is not just a concern for security professionals. Journalists, activists, teachers, parents, freelancers, and everyday internet users all share files containing hidden data. CleanFile exists to give all of these people an effortless way to protect themselves.
How CleanFile protects your privacy
Unlike cloud-based metadata removal services, CleanFile processes every file entirely inside your web browser using client-side JavaScript. When you select a file, our code reads the binary data locally, parses the metadata structures specific to each format, and produces a clean copy — all without any network request leaving your device.
For images, we use the browser's Canvas API to re-render the visual content without embedded EXIF, GPS, or IPTC metadata. For PDF and Office documents, we directly modify the internal XML or dictionary structures to clear metadata fields while preserving the document layout and content. For audio and video files, we strip ID3 tags, MP4 atom metadata, and similar embedded data.
This architecture means your files never touch our servers. There is no upload, no temporary cloud storage, and no server-side processing. Your data stays on your device from start to finish.
Who uses CleanFile
Journalists & investigators
Protect source anonymity by stripping device identifiers, GPS coordinates, and timestamps from photos and documents before publication.
Business professionals
Remove author names, company information, revision history, and internal metadata from contracts, proposals, and reports before sending them to clients.
Content creators & photographers
Strip camera model, lens details, editing software, and location data from images before uploading to portfolios, marketplaces, or social media.
Privacy-conscious individuals
Remove GPS coordinates from vacation photos, strip personal info from resumes, and clean audio recordings before sharing with friends or online communities.
Educators & students
Clean personal metadata from assignments, presentations, and research papers before submitting or distributing them.
Legal professionals
Sanitize documents before disclosure to avoid leaking internal metadata, revision counts, tracked changes, and author identification.
What matters here
Local first
File analysis and cleaning happen in your browser whenever the format allows it. No uploads, no cloud storage, no server-side processing.
Clear before you share
The product is designed to show the privacy-relevant fields so you understand exactly what hidden data exists and what is being removed.
Minimal friction
No account, no upload queue, and no extra workflow just to strip metadata. Drag, drop, review, and clean in seconds.
Focused scope
CleanFile is not trying to be a giant editor. It is built to do one privacy task well — removing hidden metadata from your files.
Open & transparent
Our codebase is open source, so anyone can audit how files are processed. See exactly what we do with your data — which is nothing beyond local processing.
Universal access
Works on any device with a modern browser — Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android. Install as a PWA for offline use anywhere.
Supported file formats
CleanFile currently supports a wide range of file types: images (JPEG, PNG, WebP, GIF, TIFF, BMP, HEIC, AVIF, SVG), PDF documents, Microsoft Office files (DOCX, XLSX, PPTX), audio files (MP3, WAV, FLAC, AAC, OGG, M4A), video files (MP4, MOV), and ZIP archives. We continuously expand format support based on real-world file types people actually share.
Each format has its own metadata structure. Images use EXIF, IPTC, and XMP standards. PDFs store metadata in an Info Dictionary. Office documents embed core properties in XML. Audio files use ID3 tags. Understanding these differences is why CleanFile uses format-specific parsers rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
Built with modern web technology
CleanFile is built with Nuxt 3, Vue.js, and TypeScript, deployed on Cloudflare's global edge network for fast loading worldwide. The file processing engine uses specialized parsers for each format, ensuring accurate metadata detection and removal. As a Progressive Web App (PWA), CleanFile can be installed on your device and used completely offline.
Need help or found an issue?
If you find a broken file case, a metadata field we missed, or a workflow that feels unclear, contact us and include the file type, device, and what metadata you expected to remove. We read every report and use them to improve format coverage.