Redact PDF
Drag boxes over names, numbers or signatures. Pages with boxes are redrawn as images with the boxes painted into the pixels, so nothing can be copied from under them.
Runs in your browser: nothing you enter is sent anywhere.
How to use it
- Choose or drop a PDF.
- Pick a page number and drag over the parts to hide. Repeat for other pages.
- Choose the quality and press Redact and download. The file is named
name-redacted.pdf.
How it works
For each page with boxes the tool draws the page with the browser PDF renderer, fills your boxes with solid black on the canvas, stores the result as a JPEG and puts it on a new page of the same size. Because the black is part of the pixels, there is no text layer left to read. Covering text with a black rectangle drawn on top of it would not do this, as the text would stay in the file.
Example
A 3-page contract with a box over an account number on page 2 gives a 3-page file where pages 1 and 3 are unchanged and page 2 is a picture with a black bar.
Tips
- Draw boxes slightly larger than the text.
- Run the redacted file through a text extractor to confirm the hidden words are gone.
Frequently asked questions
Is the text under the box really removed?
Yes for pages with boxes. Each such page is rendered to a picture, the box is painted into the picture and the original page is dropped, so no text, hidden layer or object remains in that page.
What changes on the other pages?
Nothing. Pages without boxes are copied as they are, so they keep their text. If something sensitive appears on several pages, put a box on each of them.
Why is the file bigger or the text not selectable?
Redacted pages are pictures. A higher quality setting gives sharper pages and a larger file. 150 dpi suits reading on screen and ordinary printing.
Does this clean the metadata?
The result is a new document, so the original title, author and bookmarks are not copied. Check the result in a viewer before you share it.
Is my file uploaded?
No. Rendering and saving happen in your browser. Password-protected files cannot be opened, and each file can be up to 100 MB.