The invention provides a method for cleaning a metal surface by short pulsed laser. The method cleans the area to be cleaned on the metal surface in a manner of round lapping irradiated by defocusing facula of laser and is characterized in that: (1) the short pulsed laser is adopted to clean the surface, wherein, the laser pulse width is less than 100ns, and the peak power density is more than 100MW / cm<2>; (2) when processed, the end face, as well as the upper surface and the lower surface near the end face, need to be cleaned, and the laser irradiates the upper surface of a sheet metal at an inclined angle of 45 - 60 degrees, with part of the laser facula being projected on the end face and the other part of the laser facula being projected on the upper surface; mainly aiming at meeting the requirements for cleaning a thin layer of oxide film on the surface of titanium alloy, aluminum alloy and the like before welding, the method can obtain higher surface cleaning quality than the conventional laser cleaning method and faster process flow than acid cleaning method, is suitable for rapid treatment of laser processing, and has good reference value for the fast flow of processing production line and wide applicability.