How to remove mac extended attributes from a file?

Question

I have the following special attributes on my pdf file:

-rw-r--r--@ 1 Barnabas  staff  18227 Oct  9 11:34 myfile.pdf
        com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms      331 
        com.apple.quarantine       68 

How can I remove them?

Answer 1

Use xattr to delete the special attributes:

xattr -d com.apple.quarantine myfile.pdf
xattr -d com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms myfile.pdf

From man xattr:

NAME
 xattr -- display and manipulate extended attributes

SYNOPSIS
     xattr [-lrsvx] file ...
     xattr -p [-lrsvx] attr_name file ...
     xattr -w [-rsx] attr_name attr_value file ...
     xattr -d [-rsv] attr_name file ...
     xattr -c [-rsv] file ...
     xattr -h | --help