What this tool does
- Draw redaction boxes — drag over anything you want gone, on any page
- Find and redact words — type a name, number or term and every occurrence is boxed automatically
- True removal — redacted pages are flattened, so the text underneath no longer exists in the output file
- Metadata stripped — title, author, subject, keywords and producer fields are cleared on export
- Choice of fill — black or white boxes, and an optional label on the box
Why a black rectangle is not enough
Drawing a filled rectangle over text in a normal PDF editor hides it visually but leaves the characters in the file. Anyone can select the text under the box, copy it out, or read it with a text extractor — a mistake that has leaked court filings and government documents more than once.
This tool avoids that by rasterising every page that carries a redaction: the page is rendered to an image at high resolution with the boxes painted on, and that image replaces the page. There is no text layer left to recover, because the characters are no longer in the document at all. Pages with no redactions are copied across untouched so they keep their crisp vector text.
Why redact
- Remove bank account or card numbers before sharing a statement
- Strip names, addresses or ID numbers from a document for a records request
- Hide salary figures in a contract you need a third party to review
- Take a signature off a scan before passing it on
Frequently asked questions
Are my PDFs uploaded anywhere?
No — the file is opened and rewritten entirely inside your browser using JavaScript. Nothing is uploaded to a server, so your document never leaves your device.
Is the redacted text really unrecoverable?
Yes, on redacted pages. Those pages are re-rendered as images with the black boxes baked in and the original page object is discarded, so the characters are not present in the output file for any tool to extract.
What happens to pages I did not redact?
They are copied across unchanged, keeping selectable text and vector graphics. Only pages carrying at least one redaction box are flattened.
Does the file stay searchable?
Redacted pages do not, because they become images. If you need the rest searchable, redact as few pages as possible — or run the output through OCR PDF afterwards.
Does “find and redact” catch everything?
It matches the text layer, so it finds anything a reader could select. It cannot find text baked into a scanned image — for those pages, draw the boxes by hand. Always check the preview before downloading.
Is document metadata removed too?
Yes — title, author, subject, keywords, creator and producer are cleared, since those fields often carry a name or file path you did not mean to share.