---
title: Edit the title, author and tags of a file on a Mac
source: https://arazioformac.com/docs/edit-metadata
---

# Edit a file's title, author and tags

Pick the file up in Finder, hold <kbd>⌥</kbd>, and let go toward **Edit
Metadata**. A panel opens showing what the file already says about itself.

Works on images, PDFs, audio and video.

## It edits the file

Not a copy. Every other thing Arazio does writes a new file and leaves the
original alone, which is right for a conversion — a JPG made from a HEIC is a
second file, and the first one still has its uses.

Changing a title is not that. Nobody wants two copies of a document that differ
only in who it says wrote it. So the edit goes back into the file you dragged,
keeping its name, its permissions and its creation date.

## What you can change

| Field | Where it shows up |
|---|---|
| **Title** | Document properties, music players, video libraries |
| **Author / Artist** | Finder's Get Info, the Author column, music players |
| **Description / Comment** | Spotlight, photo libraries, player notes |
| **Copyright** | Document properties; worth setting before publishing |
| **Keywords / Genre** | Spotlight search, music and video libraries |
| **Date** | Photo libraries' timelines, sorting by date taken |
| **Album, Track** | Audio only — how a player groups and orders songs |

Fields a format cannot hold are not shown. A PDF has no album; a photograph has
no track number.

## Removing a location from a photo

A photo taken on a phone usually records the exact spot it was taken, often to
within a few metres. It is the single most surprising thing in a file somebody
is about to put on the internet.

When a picture carries one, the panel says so and offers a switch to remove it.
Everything else about the photo stays.

## Editing a photo does not re-encode it

The picture is copied across untouched and only its tags are replaced. A JPEG
is lossy, so re-encoding it to change a caption would cost a generation of
quality for a line of text. Arazio does not do that.

## The honest limits

**Audio and video rewrite their container.** The sound and the picture are
copied, never re-encoded, so nothing is lost — but the file is rewritten rather
than patched in place, which takes a moment on a long video.

**Some PDFs carry two copies of their metadata.** A PDF can hold an XMP packet
as well as the ordinary information dictionary, and a few readers prefer the
XMP one. Arazio writes the dictionary. If a change seems not to take in one
particular app, that is why.

**Stripping is a different tool.** [Strip Metadata](/docs/tools/strip-metadata)
removes everything rather than changing it, and it writes a copy — because it
destroys information, and the spare file is worth having.