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)