Redact a PDF

Choose a PDF or drop it here

Processed on this device. Nothing is uploaded.

Short answer

Choose a pattern — email addresses, phone numbers, ID numbers — or type your own text, and every match in the document is listed for you to confirm. The ones you tick are covered with a black block and, on download, deleted from the page’s own content stream, so the words are gone rather than hidden underneath. The file is then reopened and independently checked to confirm the text really is absent. All of it happens on your device.

Next step

See what is hidden inside a PDF Remove metadata from a PDF Flatten a PDF form

Doing more than one thing?

The full editor puts every operation in one workspace with undo, so you are not exporting and re-opening between each step. Same engine, same privacy, still nothing uploaded.

Open the full editor Browse all tools

Why this one does not upload your file

Almost every free redact a pdf tool works by sending your document to a server, doing the work there, and sending a result back. That is a cost decision rather than a privacy one — server time costs money, which is why those tools meter you, ask for an account, or cap your file size.

This one runs the same work in your browser using JavaScript, so your file never travels anywhere. There is no upload step, no queue, no account, and no page limit — and the page keeps working if you disconnect from the internet partway through.

You do not have to take that on trust. Open your browser's network tab and watch while you work, or read how it works.

What happens to your file

It is read from your disk into this tab's memory
Every change happens on your own processor
The result is built in memory, reopened and checked before you are offered it
Your original file is never modified
Closing the tab releases everything — nothing is stored

Questions

Straight answers

Is this real redaction, or just a black rectangle?

Real. A black rectangle drawn over text leaves the text in the file, where anyone can select, copy or search it — which is how redaction failures usually make the news. Here the covered text is deleted from the page’s own content when you download, and the finished file is reopened and checked to confirm those words are no longer present. The check result is shown to you.

Why does it sometimes remove a word next to the one I marked?

PDF text is stored in runs, and a run can kern several words together as one drawing operation. When a match shares a run with its neighbours, the whole run is removed rather than split apart and re-spaced, which errs toward removing too much rather than leaving something behind. Check the downloaded file before sending it.

Does it work on a scanned page?

Not for removal. A scan has no text to delete — the words are part of an image — so there is nothing for this to find. Use Inspect first to see whether a file has a real text layer.

Is the file uploaded?

No. The document is read from your disk, searched and rewritten in the browser tab. Nothing is sent anywhere, which for a document you are redacting is rather the point.

More tools

Everything else, also free

Merge PDFAdd two or more PDFs, drag them into the order you want, and press Merge. Split PDFOpen your PDF, choose how many pages each output file should contain, and press Split. Compress PDFOpen your PDF and choose a quality level. Rotate PDFOpen your PDF, turn every page at once or click individual pages to rotate just those, then download. Delete pagesOpen your PDF, click the pages you want gone, and download the result. Extract pagesOpen your PDF and either type a range such as 3-7, or click the pages you want in the grid. PDF to JPGOpen your PDF, pick a resolution and image format, and every page is rendered to an image in your browser. Images to PDFAdd your images, drag them into order, choose a page size, and they become a single PDF built in your browser.

See all 24 tools →