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How to see and remove the hidden details in a PDF on a Mac

A PDF can carry your name, your company and the exact macOS that made it. See what is inside on a Mac, and why the Spotlight check most guides suggest misses it.

The problem

You are sending a CV, a quote or a report, and you are not sure what the file says about you beyond what is on the pages.

What hidden information is in a PDF?

Besides the pages: a title, an author, the app that made it, the software that wrote the PDF, and dates. A PDF we made on this Mac recorded, in its Producer field, "macOS Version 27.0.1 (Build 26A434) Quartz PDFContext", and the exact time it was made. That is harmless most of the time and awkward some of the time, such as a CV whose author is your current employer.

How do I see a PDF's hidden details on a Mac?

  • Preview: choose Tools > Show Inspector, then the info tab.
  • Terminal: pdfinfo file.pdf, from the free poppler tools, lists every field.

Do not rely on Spotlight's mdls, which several guides suggest. On our test file it reported the creator and author as empty, while pdfinfo showed the Producer line with the macOS version. Spotlight shows what it indexed, not everything the file holds.

How do I remove the author from a PDF?

  • At the source: in Word, File > Properties; in Pages, the author comes from your account name. Change it, then export again.
  • Many files at once: Automator's Set PDF Metadata action can blank the author, title, subject and keywords.

How do I check it worked?

Run pdfinfo again on the new file, or open the Inspector. If a field you cleared is still there, the app you exported from wrote it again.

Our take

Check before anything that leaves your control: a CV, a tender, a document for the other side of a dispute. It takes ten seconds with pdfinfo, and the fields that cause trouble, an old employer's name or a draft's title, are the ones nobody remembers are there.

In Simply PDF

Simply PDF's Redact clears title, author and keywords as it removes the words you choose, then reads the saved file back and tells you what it found. It needs a key. See redact a PDF.

Tested on 16 October 2026 on a MacBook Air (M1), macOS 27.0.1: a PDF made with cupsfilter, read with pdfinfo from poppler and with mdls.

Questions

How do I see who made a PDF on a Mac?

Open it in Preview and choose Tools > Show Inspector, or run pdfinfo on the file in Terminal.

How do I remove the author from a PDF?

Change it in the original document's properties and export again, or blank it with Automator's Set PDF Metadata action.

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