PDF Tools
Redact a PDF
Black out sensitive parts of a PDF and remove them for good — not just cover them. The marked content is destroyed, so it cannot be copied or recovered, and the file never leaves your browser. No account, no email.
Frequently asked questions
- Is the content really gone, or just hidden?
- Really gone. The most common redaction mistake is drawing a black rectangle over text that is still selectable underneath — people have leaked secrets this way for years. This tool doesn't do that: the characters under your mark are deleted from the file itself, so there is no text, no hidden object, nothing to copy or recover. Search the downloaded file for the redacted words and they are not in it.
- Does my file get uploaded?
- No — and for redaction that is the whole point. The document you are redacting is exactly the kind you must not hand to someone else's server. Everything happens in your browser; the file never leaves your device and never reaches us.
- What's the catch?
- Almost none, now. Until recently a redacted page was flattened to an image, which destroyed the selectable text on the whole page; today only the marked characters are removed and everything else on the page — its other text, its pictures, its layout — is left exactly as it was. A few pages still have to be flattened, because their text cannot be edited safely in place: a font whose letter widths the PDF does not describe, or content drawn from a reusable block. When that happens the tool names the page and the reason on the results screen rather than letting you find out later.
- Can I redact several areas and several pages?
- Yes. Draw as many boxes as you need, across any pages. Only the characters you actually cover are removed; every other page is copied exactly as it was.
- Can I search for a name or number to redact every instance?
- Yes. Type a word, name, or number into the search box and every occurrence across the document is marked at once — all on your device, nothing uploaded. This reads the PDF's text layer, so it works on documents with real text; a scanned page has no text to search, so for scans you draw the boxes by hand (or run OCR first).
Guide
Redact a PDF — permanently remove sensitive text
Permanently remove sensitive text and images from a PDF. This guide explains the difference between real redaction and just covering text, and how to verify redaction worked.
Read the guide →