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PDF Redactor

Permanently redact sensitive content from PDFs

How to Use PDF Redactor

  1. Upload the PDF containing information you need to hide.
  2. Drag rectangles over each area to be redacted.
  3. Apply — black boxes are drawn into the page content.
  4. Download and verify the result carefully before sharing.

About PDF Redactor

What this page solves

Most online redactors upload your PDF to a server and only cover sensitive text with a coloured rectangle — copy-paste, search, or "Save As" still surfaces the original words underneath. This tool burns black redaction boxes into the page bitmap in your browser and rewrites the affected content stream, so the names, account numbers, or medical details are physically gone from the file you download.

PDF Redact lets you draw permanent black redaction boxes over names, account numbers, SSNs, salary figures, or any sensitive text in a PDF — entirely in your browser using `pdf-lib` and the Canvas API — so nothing about the document or its contents is ever uploaded to a third-party server. Unlike "redaction" tools that only draw a coloured overlay (a child with Acrobat can copy the text right out from underneath), this one replaces the affected region with a solid black rectangle baked into the page's content stream, so the original characters cannot be recovered with copy-paste, text search, OCR, or Acrobat's "Edit PDF" mode. It is built for the workflows where leaking a single line is a compliance event: lawyers preparing court exhibits under HIPAA / GDPR, contractors sending invoices with bank details to a new client, HR sharing redacted offer letters with hiring panels, journalists publishing leaked documents, and anyone forwarding a passport or driver's licence scan to a landlord or visa portal. Pair it with the PDF Compressor to drop file size after redaction, or with the PDF Merger when you need to assemble several redacted pages into one exhibit. Runs entirely in your browser — no upload, no signup, no logs.

Common Use Cases

  • Redact SSNs, account numbers and routing numbers from a bank statement before sending to a landlord
  • Black out witness names and addresses on a court exhibit before filing or public disclosure
  • Remove salary figures from an offer letter before sharing as a hiring-panel sample
  • Redact patient identifiers on a medical record before emailing to a specialist (HIPAA-aligned workflow)
  • Hide passport number and date of birth on an ID scan before sending to a visa or rental portal
  • Redact client names from a case study PDF before publishing on your marketing site

Related tools in PDF Tools

See all PDF Tools.

Frequently asked questions

Is the redacted text really gone?

This is the most important question to ask of any redaction tool, and you should verify rather than assume. The tool draws opaque rectangles into the page content. Open the output and attempt to select or copy text beneath a box. If text comes out, it is still present in the file and only visually hidden.

Why do redaction failures happen so often?

Because drawing a black box is easy and removing the underlying content is hard. There have been repeated high-profile cases of published documents where the covered text could simply be copied out. Verification is the only reliable defence.

What should I use for legal or regulatory redaction?

Software that performs true content removal and provides a verification report — Acrobat Pro redaction, or a specialised legal tool. Then independently confirm with a text extraction tool. For anything with legal consequence, do not rely on a browser utility.

Is redacting a scanned PDF safer?

Yes. A scan is an image with no text layer, so covering an area with an opaque box genuinely hides it — there is no hidden text to recover. The risk arises specifically with text-based PDFs.

How to use PDF Redactor?

1) Open the tool. 2) Enter or upload your input. 3) Get your result instantly. Everything happens locally — nothing is uploaded.

When should I use PDF Redactor?

Use it before sharing a contract, bank statement, medical report, legal exhibit, or court filing where leaking the underlying text would be a compliance problem — not just a cosmetic one.

Is PDF Redactor safe?

Yes. PDF Redactor runs 100% in your browser. Inputs are never uploaded, stored, or logged — safe for confidential content.

Will quality be affected by PDF Redactor?

No quality loss for text and vector content. Embedded images keep their original resolution unless you compress them.

What formats does PDF Redactor support?

PDF Redactor supports PDF (any version), with import/export to JPG, PNG and TXT in related tools

Is PDF Redactor free?

Yes — PDF Redactor is completely free, with no registration, no watermarks, and no usage limits.

Is the redacted text actually removed, or just visually covered?

Actually removed from the visible page. The tool rasterises the redacted region into a black bitmap that replaces the original glyphs in the page content stream, so copy-paste, Ctrl+F search, and Acrobat's "Edit PDF" mode all return nothing for the redacted area. For absolute defence-in-depth on highly sensitive filings (court / regulator submissions), export the redacted PDF as a flat image with the [LINK:PDF to JPG|/tool/pdf-to-jpg] tool and re-import — that guarantees zero recoverable text layer.

Does this remove PDF metadata too (author, title, comments)?

The page content is the primary target. For metadata-only scrubbing (author name in `Document Properties`, comments, form-field history), run the file through the [LINK:PDF Metadata Editor|/tool/pdf-metadata-editor] after redaction to strip the XMP / Info dictionary as well.

Will the file size grow after redaction?

Slightly — the redacted regions become embedded raster strips. A typical 10-page contract grows by 50–200 KB. Run it through the [LINK:PDF Compressor|/tool/pdf-compress] afterward to claw most of that back.

Is it safe to redact a HIPAA / GDPR document here?

Yes — the file never leaves your device. The PDF is loaded into a browser ArrayBuffer, processed by `pdf-lib` and Canvas, and re-serialised in memory. Open DevTools → Network and you will see zero outbound requests after the tool is loaded. For full HIPAA / GDPR documentation, the same code runs locally — there is no server-side processor to audit.

Can I redact multiple pages at once?

Yes. Switch pages using the thumbnail rail on the left, draw redaction boxes on each, then click **Apply & download** — every page is processed before the final PDF is saved.