Clean your documents before you send them. Metadata hides who you are, where you were, who edited what — Scrubd strips it from images, PDFs, Office files and video, in one drag-and-drop. 100% on your Mac.
Drop one file or a whole batch onto Scrubd — photos, PDFs, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, MP4 or MOV. No upload, no account, no project to set up. Everything happens on your Mac.
Scrubd audits each file and shows you exactly what metadata is buried in it — GPS coordinates, author names, edit history, comments, the software that made it. No blind cleaning.
Choose a profile — Publish to web, Send to client/lawyer, Strip everything — and Scrubd writes clean copies, leaving your originals untouched. Now they're safe to send.
Not just photos. Scrubd cleans images (JPEG, PNG, HEIC, TIFF…), PDFs, Office documents (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx) and video (MP4, MOV) — the real files you actually email, in one drag-and-drop.
Scrubd shows you exactly what hidden metadata is inside each file — GPS, author, edit history, software, comments — and what will be left after. You see it, then you strip it. No blind cleaning.
Pick the situation, not the settings: Publish to web, Send to client/lawyer, or Strip everything. Scrubd applies the right rules for each — keep an image's colour profile for the web, nuke every identifying field for a legal handover.
Word, Excel and PowerPoint carry author names, tracked-change history, comments and company info that survive normal sharing — the part free EXIF tools can't touch. Scrubd scrubs them in batch, the way a firm needs before a document goes out.
Strips location, camera serials, author and device fingerprints while keeping the file usable — perfect for photos and images headed to a blog, store or social post.
Removes author names, tracked changes, comments and company info from Word, Excel and PowerPoint, plus all document properties — so what you send is the document, and nothing about who made it.
The nuclear option: every removable metadata field across every supported format, gone. When in doubt, this leaves nothing hidden behind for anyone to dig out.
| Scrubd | ExifCleaner | ImageOptim | Preview / Finder | Online strippers | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cleans images | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ~ partial | ✓ |
| Cleans PDFs | ✓ | ~ limited | ✗ | ✗ | ~ varies |
| Cleans Office (.docx / .xlsx / .pptx) | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Cleans video (MP4 / MOV) | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ~ rare |
| Audit — see metadata before you clean | ✓ | ~ view only | ✗ | ~ inspector | ✗ |
| Intent profiles (web / client / strip all) | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Runs on-device — nothing leaves your Mac | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ uploads your file |
| Price | $14.99 one-time | free · images | free · images | built-in | free · uploads |
The free tools are great — for photos. ExifCleaner and ImageOptim strip image EXIF beautifully, but they don't touch the Word, Excel and PowerPoint files most people actually email, and they can't audit a PDF or a video. Online strippers do more formats but you have to upload your confidential file to a stranger's server to use them. Scrubd does the formats that matter — images, PDFs, Office and video — shows you what's hidden, and never lets a byte leave your Mac. One-time $14.99.
Images (JPEG, PNG, HEIC, TIFF and more), PDFs, Microsoft Office documents (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx) and video (MP4 and MOV). Scrubd is built to cover the files you actually share — not just photos. You can drag in a single file or a whole batch at once, and it handles each one with the right rules for its type.
No. Auditing, stripping and writing clean copies all run entirely on your Mac. Your documents are never uploaded anywhere — there is no account, no cloud, no server that ever sees your files. The only network connections Scrubd makes are an update check and a one-off licence validation, never your files. You can confirm this with a firewall tool like Little Snitch or LuLu.
By default Scrubd leaves your originals untouched and writes a clean copy alongside them (for example, report-clean.pdf), so you always have the source if you need it. If you'd rather clean in place, you can switch to overwrite — but the safe, copy-first behaviour is the default precisely so nothing is ever lost.
Yes — that's the whole point. Office files quietly carry author names, your company name, tracked-change history, comments and revision data that survive normal sharing and that free EXIF tools simply don't touch. Scrubd opens the document package, strips those fields, and writes a clean file — in batch, so a folder of contracts is cleaned in one go.
Instead of toggling dozens of individual fields, you pick the situation. "Publish to web" strips location and identity but keeps a file web-ready; "Send to client/lawyer" does an Office-grade scrub of authorship and history; "Strip everything" removes every removable field across every format. The audit view always shows you exactly what each profile will remove before you commit.
Anyone who emails documents and would rather not hand over hidden data with them: lawyers and firms sending contracts, journalists protecting sources, freelancers sending deliverables to clients, and anyone publishing photos who doesn't want their home address baked into the GPS. If a file leaves your hands, Scrubd makes sure only the file leaves.
Yes. Scrubd is sold directly and distributed as a Developer ID app, notarized by Apple. That keeps it lightweight while still being Gatekeeper-checked and safe to run. It needs no special system permissions beyond access to the files you drag in.
One-time, $14.99 — buy once, own forever, with free updates to your version. No subscription. A single licence covers all the Macs you personally own, with no per-seat counting.
Absolutely — a 14-day money-back guarantee, no questions asked. Payments are handled by Paddle; just reply to your receipt and we'll sort it out.
