NAME

       mat2 - the metadata anonymisation toolkit 2

SYNOPSIS

       mat2 [-h] [-v] [-l] [-V] [-s | -L] [files [files ...]]

DESCRIPTION

       mat2  removes  metadata  from  various  fileformats.  It  supports a wide variety of file formats, audio,
       office, images, …

       Careful, mat2 does not clean files in-place, instead, it will produce a  file  with  the  word  "cleaned"
       between   the   filename  and  its  extension,  for  example  "filename.cleaned.png"  for  a  file  named
       "filename.png".

OPTIONS

   positional arguments:
       files  the files to process

   optional arguments:
       -h, --help
              show this help message and exit

       -v, --version
              show program's version number and exit

       -l, --list
              list all supported fileformats

       --check-dependencies
              check if mat2 has all the dependencies it needs

       -V, --verbose
              show more verbose status information

       --unknown-members policy
              how to handle unknown members of archive-style files (policy should be one of: abort, omit, keep)

       -s, --show
              list harmful metadata detectable by mat2 without removing them

       -L, --lightweight
              remove SOME metadata

       --no-sandbox
              disable bubblewrap's sandboxing

       --inplace
              clean in place, without backup

EXAMPLES

       To remove all the metadata from a PDF file:

              mat2 ./myfile.pdf

NOTES ABOUT METADATA

       While mat2 is doing its very best to display metadata when the --show flag is  passed,  it  doesn't  mean
       that a file is clean from any metadata if mat2 doesn't show any. There is no reliable way to detect every
       single possible metadata for complex file formats.

       This is why you shouldn't rely on metadata's presence to decide if your file must be cleaned or not.

       Moreover, mat2 goes to great lengths to make sure that as much metadata as  possible  are  removed.  This
       might  sometimes  result in a loss of quality of the processed files. For example, textual based pdf file
       converted into image based one means that it'll be no longer possible to select text in them.  If  you're
       experiencing  this, you might want to give the lightweight cleaning mode a try, but keep in mind by doing
       so, some metadata won't be cleaned.

BUGS

       While mat2 does its very best to remove every single metadata, it's still in beta, and some might remain.
       Should you encounter some issues, check the bugtracker: https://0xacab.org/jvoisin/mat2/issues

       Please use accordingly and be careful.

AUTHOR

       This software was made by Julien (jvoisin) Voisin with the support of the Tails project.

COPYRIGHT

       This software is released on LGPLv3.

SEE ALSO

       exiftool(1p) pdf-redact-tools(1)