PDF — Put your documents in order.
Redact a PDF
A black box drawn on a PDF hides nothing — the text is still underneath, one copy-paste away. This takes it out.
- Search for a name or a number and every occurrence on every page is marked — or let Find private details mark every email address, phone, card and account number at once. Draw boxes by hand, or with the keyboard, for anything else.
- Scanned pages are read on your device, so search sees into them too, and the redacted scans are read back to check nothing marked is still legible.
- Each page with a mark is rebuilt as a picture with the marks burned in. Its text, hidden text, form values and comments are gone, because none of the original page is kept.
- Pages without marks are copied as they are, so their text stays selectable and searchable.
- The result is read back and searched again before you get it: “found 0 times” is measured, not promised. Metadata goes too.
Everything on this page runs on your device. Nothing you drop here is uploaded.
Questions
- Why not just draw black rectangles?
- Because the text under them is still in the file. Court filings, contracts and government reports have leaked that way for twenty years.
- Can I still select text on redacted pages?
- No. Those pages become images, which is what makes the redaction real. Pages you didn’t mark keep their text.
- Does search work on scanned documents?
- Yes. Pages without a text layer are offered to the text reader, which runs on your device; then search and Find private details cover them. Reading can miss words, so look over the scans too.
- Is my document uploaded?
- No. It’s read and rebuilt in this page.