.TH mat2 "1" "October 2025" "mat2 0.14.0" "User Commands"

.SH NAME
mat2 \- the metadata anonymisation toolkit 2

.SH SYNOPSIS
\fBmat2\fR [\-h] [\-v] [\-l] [\-V] [-s | -L] [\fIfiles\fR [\fIfiles ...\fR]]

.SH DESCRIPTION
.B 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".

.SH OPTIONS
.SS "positional arguments:"
.TP
\fBfiles\fR
the files to process
.SS "optional arguments:"
.TP
\fB\-h\fR, \fB\-\-help\fR
show this help message and exit
.TP
\fB\-v\fR, \fB\-\-version\fR
show program's version number and exit
.TP
\fB\-l\fR, \fB\-\-list\fR
list all supported fileformats
.TP
\fB\-\-check\-dependencies\fR
check if mat2 has all the dependencies it needs
.TP
\fB\-V\fR, \fB\-\-verbose\fR
show more verbose status information
.TP
\fB\-\-unknown-members\fR \fIpolicy\fR
how to handle unknown members of archive-style files (policy should be one of: abort, omit, keep)
.TP
\fB\-s\fR, \fB\-\-show\fR
list harmful metadata detectable by mat2 without removing them
.TP
\fB\-L\fR, \fB\-\-lightweight\fR
remove SOME metadata
.TP
\fB\--inplace\fR
clean in place, without backup

.SH EXAMPLES
To remove all the metadata from a PDF file:
.PP
.nf
.RS
mat2 ./myfile.pdf
.RE
.fi
.PP

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


.SH BUGS

While mat2 does its very best to remove every single metadata,
it's still in beta, and \fBsome\fR might remain. Should you encounter
some issues, check the bugtracker: https://github.com/jvoisin/mat2/issues
.PP
Please use accordingly and be careful.

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

.SH COPYRIGHT
This software is released on LGPLv3.

.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR exiftool (1p)
.BR pdf-redact-tools (1)
