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Redact PDF

Permanently remove sensitive information from your PDF

PrivateNo upload

Redaction is permanent

Redacted content cannot be recovered after download. The redacted file will be saved as a new file (e.g., filename_redacted.pdf) - your original file will not be modified.

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  • Files never leave your computer - ideal for sensitive business documents
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This tool lets you mark specific text, images, or regions on a PDF page and permanently delete the underlying content there, replacing it with an opaque fill in a new copy of the file. Everything runs in your browser tab, so the document never leaves your device. The mistake people make most often is treating this like drawing a black rectangle in a PDF viewer: an annotation box sits on top of the page and leaves the original text intact underneath, still selectable, copyable, and recoverable. True redaction removes that underlying content instead of hiding it. The original file is left untouched; you download a separate, redacted copy.

Worked example

Input
A one-page PDF containing the visible, selectable line 'Patient SSN: 123-45-6789'. The user draws a redaction box over the digits '123-45-6789' and applies the redaction.
Output
A new PDF in which that page shows a solid black block covering the SSN's former location, and the string '123-45-6789' is no longer present anywhere in the file - it cannot be selected, searched, or copied out of that area.
Why
Proper redaction deletes the underlying text object inside the marked region and fills the space with an opaque color, rather than leaving the original text intact beneath a drawn box.

How it works

Mark, then delete
You select one or more pages, then draw boxes over the regions you want gone, or select text directly if the tool supports it. On apply, it deletes the text objects and image pixels inside each marked region from the page's content and fills the area with a solid color, producing a new PDF file rather than modifying the original in place.
Stays on your device
Opening, editing, and re-saving the PDF happens locally in the browser tab; nothing is uploaded to a server at any point in the process. That matters for the documents redaction is normally used on - medical records, legal filings, financial statements, HR files - where sending the file to a third-party server before it is even sanitized would defeat the purpose of redacting it.

When to use it

  • Removing an account number, SSN, or medical record number from a document before sending it to someone outside the original recipient list
  • Preparing a legal filing or FOIA response for public release by deleting names and case details a court or agency ordered withheld
  • Stripping proprietary pricing or contract terms out of a vendor agreement before sharing a copy with a different partner for review

Worth knowing

  • Marking a region on one page does not search the rest of the document - if the same sensitive text appears on other pages, each instance has to be found and marked separately.
  • Document metadata (author, title, custom properties) and any embedded file attachments live outside the page content, so drawing a redaction box does not clear them; check those separately if they might carry sensitive information.
  • The operation is destructive on the exported copy: once a region is redacted and saved, the removed text or image data cannot be recovered from that file, so keep the unredacted original somewhere else before you start.

Frequently asked

If I draw a black box over text in my PDF viewer, is that the same as using this redaction tool?
No. An annotation or drawing tool lets you place a box on top of the page, but the original text stays in the content stream underneath it - it can still be selected, copied, or exposed by removing the annotation layer. This tool instead deletes the underlying text and image data in the marked area, so there is nothing left there to recover.
Can I redact a scanned, image-only PDF the same way?
Yes - you draw the box over the sensitive area in the scanned image just as you would over selectable text, and that portion of the image is removed the same way. Since there is no separate text layer to strip out, how well it works depends entirely on how precisely your box covers the sensitive area in the scan.

References

All PDFb2 tools