Redact PDF
Cover names, ID numbers, phone numbers and other private information in a PDF with black boxes, and remove the covered text from the file for good. Find and redact all matches at once. Your file is never uploaded.
Your files never leave this device. Everything is processed inside your browser and nothing is uploaded to a server.
How to use the Redact PDF tool
- Click "Choose PDF file" or drag the PDF you want to redact onto the screen.
- Drag on the page to draw black boxes over what you want to remove. Use the ‹ › buttons to change pages.
- For words that appear many times, such as a name or phone number, type them in "Find and redact" and click "Redact all matches".
- Click a box to select it and drag to move it, or remove it with "Delete the last one" or the Delete key.
- Click "Redact and save", then "Download" when it is done.
Frequently asked questions
Are my files uploaded to a server?
No. Files are processed only inside your browser and are never sent to any server. Only the code and character mapping data needed for processing are downloaded from this site; your files themselves never leave your device. You can check this yourself in the Network tab of your browser's developer tools.
Are my files safe even with ads on the page?
Yes. Ads only run outside the tool area. The tool area, where you choose and process files, is an isolated space your browser keeps separate, so other scripts on the page, including ads, cannot read your file content or file names. Nothing inside the tool area can be sent out. When you drag a file onto the page, the tool area expands to fill the screen so the isolated space receives the file.
How is this different from drawing a black box?
A black rectangle drawn in a PDF editor leaves the text underneath in the file, so it can be copied or revealed by moving the box. This tool redraws each redacted page as an image with the boxes painted in, and does not put the original text or images of that page in the new file. The covered text cannot be recovered.
What happens to other text on a redacted page?
A redacted page becomes a single image, so the rest of its text can no longer be selected or searched, though it looks the same. Pages without redactions keep their text (in the rare case that a page shares its content with a redacted page, it becomes an image too so the redacted text does not remain). To make redacted pages searchable again, run the result through "OCR PDF".
Find and redact missed some text.
Text on scanned pages is part of an image and cannot be found. Words that break across lines are also missed, because PDFs store text line by line. Matches are covered with some margin, because character widths are estimated, so neighboring characters may be partly covered too. After finding, check every page and draw boxes over anything that was missed.
Is anything left out of the result?
So that redacted text does not leak elsewhere, bookmarks, links, form fields, document information (title, author and so on) and attachments are not kept. Filled-in form values and printable comments or signatures are drawn onto the page as they look. Images, form objects (logos, headers, watermarks and so on) and fonts shared with unredacted pages are kept as they are. If something inside them must be redacted, redact every page where it appears. Font files may still contain the shapes of characters used on redacted pages (their order and position are not kept).
The file got bigger.
Redacted pages are stored as full-page images, which are larger than text. If many pages are redacted, shrink the result with "Compress PDF".