Strip metadata from files in Snow Leopard

Question

I found the command "mdls" which will show the metadata but I can't see how to delete it.

I want to get rid of the comments "kMDItemFinderComment", "kMDItemWhereFroms" from my files.

Is there a way to do this?

Answer 1

I think you're looking for the xattr command, available in Terminal:

xattr -pr com.apple.metadata:kMDItemFinderComment /

that will print all the finder comments for all files on your boot volume. To delete, use the -d switch:

xattr -dr com.apple.metadata:kMDItemFinderComment /

You should test this out on a single file before running it in bulk.

usage: xattr [-l] [-r] [-v] [-x] file [file ...]
       xattr -p [-l] [-r] [-v] [-x] attr_name file [file ...]
       xattr -w [-r] [-v] [-x] attr_name attr_value file [file ...]
       xattr -d [-r] [-v] attr_name file [file ...]

The first form lists the names of all xattrs on the given file(s).
The second form (-p) prints the value of the xattr attr_name.
The third form (-w) sets the value of the xattr attr_name to the string attr_value.
The fourth form (-d) deletes the xattr attr_name.

options:
  -h: print this help
  -r: act recursively
  -l: print long format (attr_name: attr_value and hex output has offsets and
      ascii representation)
  -v: also print filename (automatic with -r and with multiple files)
  -x: attr_value is represented as a hex string for input and output

Answer 2

You can do this by:

xattr -d com.apple.metadata:kMDItemFinderComment <file>
xattr -d com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms <file>

Seems to work for me.

Answer 3

The Spotlight comments are also stored in .DS_Store files. If you try adding a comment in Finder's information window and running xattr -d com.apple.metadata:kMDItemFinderComment, the comment will still be shown in Finder, but not by mdls -n kMDItemFinderComment. This would delete both of them:

find . -name .DS_Store -delete
xattr -dr com.apple.metadata:kMDItemFinderComment .