Strip metadata

Endpoint

Removes metadata from one image or PDF and returns the file as the response body. Nothing is stored. The format stays the same. The picture or the pages are not re-encoded, so there is no loss of quality.

In a job, the same operation is named strip_metadata, with an underscore.

What is removed

Any other kind of file is refused with unsupported_input. To remove tags from audio, use compress with audio.strip_metadata=true.

Request

Authenticate with Authorization: Bearer $SMOL_API_KEY. Send the file in one of two forms. The file can be up to 25 MB (26,214,400 bytes), or 10 MB with a test key.

Raw body

The request body is the bytes of the file. Options go in the query string. Give the file's name with ?filename= or with a Content-Disposition request header. If both are present, the query parameter is used.

POST /v1/strip-metadata?filename=photo.jpg HTTP/1.1
Host: api.smolmac.com
Authorization: Bearer $SMOL_API_KEY
Content-Length: 1614027

<the bytes of the file>

• Any Content-Type other than multipart/form-data is treated as a raw body. The header's value is not used to detect the file type.
• Send a Content-Length header. It is required with a test key. With a live key a body without it is accepted and streamed.

Multipart form

Send multipart/form-data with these parts:

Options may also be given in the query string of a multipart request. Where an option appears in both places, the query string wins, field by field.

The file name

The name is optional for most files. It is used for two things: to tell apart formats that share a container or have no signature (see type detection), and to name the file that comes back. Only the last path component is used.

Options

This endpoint has no options of its own. The only query parameter it uses is filename. Options that belong to other endpoints, such as image.quality, and a preset, are checked and then ignored. A parameter that is not a known option is refused with invalid_options.

Response

Status 200. The body is the file without its metadata. The details are in the headers.

• Smol-Kept-Original is always false on this endpoint.
• The saving is usually small, because metadata is small. A PDF can come back slightly larger after it is rewritten. The result then has increased: true and a negative Smol-Savings-Percent.
• A successful request with a live key is billed as one image, for an image and for a PDF of any length. See Billing.

Errors

An error has a JSON body in place of the file. See Errors for the format and for what to do about each code.

Examples

curl -X POST "https://api.smolmac.com/v1/strip-metadata" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SMOL_API_KEY" \
  --data-binary @IMG_2041.jpg \
  -o IMG_2041.clean.jpg

import { readFile, writeFile } from "node:fs/promises";

const response = await fetch("https://api.smolmac.com/v1/strip-metadata?filename=IMG_2041.jpg", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: { Authorization: `Bearer ${process.env.SMOL_API_KEY}` },
  body: await readFile("IMG_2041.jpg"),
});
if (!response.ok) {
  const { error } = await response.json();
  throw new Error(`${error.code}: ${error.message}`);
}

await writeFile("IMG_2041.clean.jpg", Buffer.from(await response.arrayBuffer()));

import os
import requests

with open("IMG_2041.jpg", "rb") as f:
    response = requests.post(
        "https://api.smolmac.com/v1/strip-metadata",
        params={"filename": "IMG_2041.jpg"},
        headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['SMOL_API_KEY']}"},
        data=f.read(),
    )
if not response.ok:
    error = response.json()["error"]
    raise RuntimeError(f"{error['code']}: {error['message']}")

with open("IMG_2041.clean.jpg", "wb") as out:
    out.write(response.content)

Example response

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: image/jpeg
Content-Length: 2436008
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="IMG_2041.jpg"; filename*=UTF-8''IMG_2041.jpg
Cache-Control: no-store
Smol-Version: 2026-10-01
RateLimit-Limit: 40
RateLimit-Remaining: 39
RateLimit-Reset: 1
Smol-Request-Id: req_T6wYc1NdP8qJx3Lm0ZsF
Smol-Original-Size: 2481220
Smol-Output-Size: 2436008
Smol-Savings-Percent: 1.8
Smol-Output-Format: jpg
Smol-Kept-Original: false
Smol-Billed: true
Smol-Result: {"kind":"image","input_format":"jpg","output_format":"jpg","original_size":2481220,"output_size":2436008,"savings_percent":1.8,"kept_original":false,"increased":false,"width":4032,"height":3024,"pages":null,"duration_seconds":null,"video_codec":null,"warnings":[]}

<the bytes of the file>