Redact PDF

Permanently black out sensitive text and areas in a PDF.

or drop PDF here

Runs in your browser — your file never leaves your device.

Black out the parts of a PDF you do not want seen, privately, in your browser. Drag over any area to cover it with a solid black bar, and use the label tool to note why something was withheld. Nothing is uploaded, so the confidential version never sits on anyone else's server. One thing to be clear about, because many tools are not: the bar is drawn over the page and does not delete the text beneath it, so someone determined can still recover that text from the file. The FAQs below explain exactly when that matters and how to make the removal permanent.

How to use Redact PDF

Click "Select PDF file" and choose the PDF you need to censor.
With "Redact" selected, drag a box over each thing you want covered. Bars are always solid black — there is no colour choice, so a redaction can never be mistaken for a highlight.
Switch to "Label" and click beside a bar to type a short reason if you need one, like a clause reference or "personal data".
Use Undo to take back a bar you did not mean to draw.
Click "Redact & Save" and download the blacked-out copy.

Who it is for

Redact PDF is for documents that must go out with something removed: a court filing with a minor's name, a contract shared with a third party with the pricing stripped out, a medical record released to an employer with the diagnosis blacked out. It is also used for less formal things — hiding a personal email address before posting a screenshot, or a signature before sharing a sample. What it is not is a secure redaction tool, and the difference matters enough that the page says so twice.

How it works

A black bar is drawn over the page as new content. The label tool adds a short typed reason beside a bar so a reader knows something was withheld rather than lost.
The overlay is rendered into the page appearance, so it prints and appears in every viewer — it is not an annotation that can be switched off from a layers panel.
For true removal the workflow is two tools: redact and save here, then rasterise with PDF to JPG and rebuild with JPG to PDF. The rebuilt file is pixels, so there is no text layer left to extract.

What it cannot do

The bar does not delete the text underneath. Anyone with a text-extraction tool or a PDF library can recover what you covered. This is true of most browser redaction tools and is the single most important thing on this page.
Document metadata, the title, author, bookmarks and attachments are not touched, so a redacted file can still carry names in its properties.
The filename is unchanged. Rename it before sending if it identifies the subject.
Only the area you drag over is covered. Text that flows outside the box, or a second copy of the same value elsewhere on the page, stays visible.

Frequently asked questions

Does this permanently delete the text under the black bar?

No, and you should know that before you send the file on. The bar is new content drawn on top of the page; the original text is still in the file underneath and can be recovered by copying and pasting, by a text-extraction tool, or by stripping the overlay. This is true of most browser-based redaction tools — we would rather tell you than let you find out afterwards.

So how do I redact something so it cannot be recovered?

Flatten the page into pixels. Redact and save here first, then run the result through PDF to JPG and reassemble the images with JPG to PDF. The new file has no text layer at all, so there is nothing left to extract. You give up selectable text and the file gets bigger — that is the trade for certainty.

When is the black bar on its own good enough?

When the page will only ever be printed, or shown on a screen, or shared with people who are not going to go digging — ink and pixels genuinely cover what is under them. Treat it as unsafe the moment the PDF file itself goes to a third party, an opponent, or a public filing.

Does it work on a scanned PDF?

Yes, and a scan has no text layer to extract in the first place. Even then the original page image is still in the file below the bar and can be recovered by removing the overlay, so for anything genuinely sensitive the rasterise step above is still the right move.

What about names in the file properties, or attachments?

Redaction only covers what you drag over on the page. The document title, author, metadata, bookmarks and any attachments are untouched, and so is the filename — rename the file and check its properties before you send it.

Is the file uploaded?

No. The PDF is opened, marked up and saved entirely inside your browser, so the unredacted original is never transmitted anywhere. That part is completely private.