Metadata module

The Metadata module lets you view and change the descriptive attributes of a PDF (title, author, subject, keywords, and so on). This information is not visible in the visual content of the document, but it is used by:

indexing and search systems (Spotlight, document managers, web engines);
reading software, which can show the title in the window bar or the tab list;
automatic filing tools (DEVONthink, EagleFiler, and so on).

For a professional document, careful metadata significantly improves how findable and identifiable the file is. The module is available from the Editing category of the Dashboard.

Available fields

The Information section gathers five freely editable fields:

Title

The declared title of the document. To be distinguished from the file name: the title is an internal PDF attribute, independent of the name on disk. It is what a PDF reader will show in its title bar (macOS Preview, Adobe Acrobat, and so on) if this field is filled in.

Author

The name of the person or organization responsible for the document. It can be left empty to anonymise a file. The Dashboard shows this value in the information area when the document is opened.

Subject

A short description of the document's content (equivalent to a file's "description" in the Finder). Useful for recalling the file's context at a glance without opening it.

Creator

The application that created the PDF. This field is usually filled in automatically by the source software (Microsoft Word, Pages, InDesign, and so on). It differs from the PDF Producer (the export engine), which cannot be changed here.

Keywords

A list of terms intended for indexing and searching. Keywords can be separated by commas: HtkPDF automatically splits them into a structured list when saving.

Example: invoice, 2026, case-001, client-ACME produces four distinct keywords.

Applying changes

Unlike the other modules, metadata changes do not require an Apply button: each field is applied automatically to the document as you type. The move into pending changes is immediate; the Save button on the Dashboard becomes active as soon as a field has been changed.

As with the other operations, changes only become permanent once the document has been saved with ⌘S.

Initial loading

When the module opens, the fields are pre-filled with the PDF's existing values. If the document has no metadata at all, the fields appear empty — the placeholders then indicate the expected purpose of each field.

Best practices

Before distributing, always check the Author field: it may contain the name of the user who created the file (by default, your system user name), which may reveal unwanted personal information.
Creator field: if you want to make a PDF "generic" (for example, to hide a document's Microsoft Word origin), change this field. That does not, however, hide the PDF Producer (informative about the export engine).
Keywords: take care over this field for documents destined for large-volume archiving. Indexing tools make extensive use of it, and good segmentation makes later searching considerably easier.
Complete anonymisation: to erase every piece of metadata at once (and not just the ones editable here), use the Scrub metadata module (Scrubber) in the Security category instead — it also removes the less visible technical information (creation date, XMP identifiers, user traces, and so on).

Note: this module does not give access to the dates (creation, modification) or the PDF Producer, which stay read-only and are only visible in the Dashboard information. These fields are managed automatically by the macOS PDF engine at save time.

Screenshots

1 screenshot — click to enlarge