Redact a PDF
Remove, not cover up
Where it runs: On your machine.
Drop a file to begin.
Everything happens in this tab. The file is never sent, so there is no upload, no queue and no size ceiling beyond your device's memory.
What this tool does
The targeted characters are removed from the content stream, not hidden under a rectangle: they survive neither a copy-paste, nor a search, nor an indexing engine. Image pixels are blacked out inside the image itself, and annotations touching the area are deleted. A tooltip has been enough, before now, to reveal what a black box was hiding.
In the same family
Further reading
Where the file goes
How to do it
- 01Drop in the PDF.
- 02Draw the areas to remove, or search for a word to mark them all at once.
- 03Redact: characters are pulled out, pixels blacked out.
Frequently asked questions
- How is this different from a black rectangle?
- A black rectangle only hides the display: the text is still underneath and comes back on a copy-paste, a search or an indexing engine. Here the targeted characters are pulled out of the content stream one by one, their advance given back as an equivalent kerning gap: the rest of the line does not shift by a point.
- What about information inside images?
- The pixels are blacked out in the image itself, not covered over. Annotations touching the area are deleted too. A tooltip has been enough, before now, to reveal what a black box was hiding.
- Does the document go to a server?
- No, and this may be the tool where that matters most. Everything happens in your browser: a document you redact is by definition a document you do not want circulating.