Is the redacted text actually removed?

An opaque black rectangle is drawn over the region. The covered glyphs are still in the file's content stream — for security-grade redaction, also re-flatten with a tool like qpdf.

Can I redact on multiple pages?

Yes. Add as many rectangles as you need, each pinned to a specific page.

Redact PDF

Define rectangles to permanently cover sensitive content with opaque black bars.

Drop a PDF

or click to browse your computer

Accepted: PDF · Files stay on your device

How to redact pdf

1
Upload your PDF.
2
Add one or more rectangles and position them per page.
3
Download the redacted PDF.

Understanding redact pdf

Real redaction has to destroy data, not cover it. Drawing a black rectangle in a PDF editor leaves the original text underneath, where anyone can select and copy it — a mistake that has embarrassed governments and law firms repeatedly.

This tool rasterises the affected pages after painting the redaction boxes, so the page becomes an image with the covered content genuinely gone. The trade-off is that redacted pages lose selectable text.

Remember that redaction is not only about the visible page: clear the metadata with PDF Info too, and check for content in headers, footers and page margins.

When you would use it

—Removing bank account numbers before sharing an invoice.
—Blacking out personal data in documents released under a records request.
—Hiding salary figures in an offer letter used as a template.
—Anonymising client names in a case study.

Practical tips

Extend each box a few millimetres past the text — glyph bounding boxes can be wider than they look.
Verify the output by opening it and trying to select text where the black box is; nothing should be selectable.
Clear the document metadata afterwards, since author and title fields are not covered by page-level redaction.

Troubleshooting

The redacted page looks less sharp: Flattening rasterises the page. Raise the rendering resolution if the document will be printed.
Search still finds a redacted word: It appears elsewhere in the document. Search the full text with PDF to TXT to find every occurrence.

Frequently asked questions

Related tools

View all tools →