See what's hidden in your files — then remove it.
Photos, PDFs, Word docs and code carry data you never see: metadata and GPS, invisible tracking characters, hidden text, watermarks. scrub finds it, tells you exactly what it is, and cleans it — all on your own device. Nothing is ever uploaded.
Windows · free to scan · runs 100% offline · part of The GG Network
What's actually hiding in your files
Most of it is invisible on screen. Any of it can identify you, leak private details, or track a document back to you.
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Metadata & GPS
EXIF, XMP, IPTC and Content Credentials in photos; author, company and edit history in documents — often including where and when.
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Invisible characters
Zero-width and Unicode "tag" characters slipped into text to fingerprint or watermark it — completely invisible when you read it.
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Look-alike letters
Cyrillic or Greek characters swapped for ordinary letters (homoglyphs) — a word that looks normal but isn't.
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Hidden text & macros
Vanished text, tracked changes, comments and embedded macros in Word/Office files that ride along when you send them.
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Appended & embedded data
Payloads tacked onto the end of images, embedded files and auto-running JavaScript inside PDFs.
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Watermarks
Invisible marks embedded to trace a file. scrub removes the fragile ones and is honest about the robust ones it can't.
Works on the files you actually share
🖼️ Images
PNG & JPEG — strips metadata and appended data losslessly, no quality change.
📕 PDFs
Flags metadata, JavaScript, auto-actions, embedded files and hidden text.
📘 Word / Office
Reads the real document text, hidden runs, macros, comments and author data.
💻 Text & code
Invisible characters, look-alike letters and odd whitespace in any text file.
How it works
No account, no upload, no learning curve. Double-click, drop a file, done.
Drop a file in — or browse your foldersPictures, PDFs, Word docs, code. Or check an entire folder at once.
See a plain verdictClean or Suspicious, with a clear, ranked list of exactly what's hidden and why.
Clean it in one clickWrites a cleaned copy (your original is untouched) — or overwrite in place with a backup kept.
Verified cleanscrub re-scans its own output and confirms the hidden content is actually gone — it never claims a fix it didn't make.
Built to stay ahead of new tricks
Hiding techniques evolve. scrub doesn't just match a fixed list — a heuristic layer flags anomalies it was never explicitly taught: unusual character categories, mixed-script words, the tell-tale rhythm of an encoded watermark, and non-standard file structure. When it meets something new it can't yet remove, it says so, and you can help it improve — on your terms, sending only a redacted snippet, never your document.
Your files never leave your machine
scrub does all of its work locally. There is no cloud, no upload, no account. The one time anything can be sent — helping us catch a brand-new technique — is a redacted snippet you review and approve first, one click at a time. Privacy isn't a feature here; it's the whole design.
Pricing
Scanning is free, forever. Cleaning and power features are GG Pro.
Free
$0
- Scan any file for hidden content
- Full findings with severity
- Images, PDFs, Word docs, code
- 100% local & private
Download free
GG Pro
Pro
- One-click clean + verify
- Batch / whole-folder cleaning
- Keep your own ownership mark
- Continuous detection updates
- Everything else on The GG Network
Get GG Pro
Questions
What is a hidden-content scanner?
A tool that inspects a file for things you can't see on screen — metadata like author and GPS, invisible Unicode characters, hidden or tracked-changes text in documents, and data appended to images — and reports exactly what it finds so you can remove it before sharing.
Does scrub upload my files?
No. scrub runs on your own device and your files never leave your machine. That is the whole point — it's a privacy tool.
How do I remove metadata from a photo before sharing?
Drop the photo into scrub; it lists the metadata (EXIF, GPS, Content Credentials); one click writes a clean copy with that data removed — losslessly, with no quality change.
Can it find invisible characters in text or code?
Yes. It flags zero-width characters, Unicode tag characters, look-alike (homoglyph) letters and unusual whitespace — and can strip them while leaving your real content intact.
Will it remove every watermark?
It removes metadata, invisible-character marks and fragile watermarks. Robust, trained watermarks (like some AI image watermarks) are designed to survive removal — scrub is honest about what it can and can't do rather than overpromising.