MotionShine01 / The mistake
Drawn on top
A black rectangle added in an editor only covers the text. Anyone can still select, copy or search the words underneath.
Free tool
Redact a PDF, gone for real.
Drag black boxes over anything private, or let the tool find every match of a word, every email address or every phone number. When you save, each page with a box is redrawn as a picture with the boxes burned in, so the hidden text cannot be copied, searched or uncovered. The file never leaves your computer.
Draw
Drag on a page to black out an area. Click × on a box to remove it.
Find and cover
Save
No boxes yet
The PDF is redacted in your browser. It is never uploaded.
Why it matters
A black box is not always a redaction.
02 / This page
Burned in
Pages with boxes are redrawn as pictures with the boxes part of the picture, so the covered words are no longer in the file.
03 / The rest
Left alone
Pages without boxes are copied as they are, so their text stays sharp and searchable.
Questions
Good to know.
Can the redacted text be recovered?
Not from the redacted pages: they are saved as pictures with black in place of the words, and the original text is not kept. Check the result by searching for a covered word in the saved PDF; it should not be found on those pages.
Why can I no longer select text on some pages?
Pages with a box become pictures, which is what removes the hidden words. Pages without boxes keep their selectable text. If you need the redacted pages searchable again, run them through PDF to text with OCR.
Did it find every match?
It finds words that are stored as text in the PDF. A scanned page is a picture, so its words cannot be searched and need boxes drawn by hand. Look through every page before you share the file.
What about hidden details in the file?
The saved PDF is a new file: the original's title, author and attachments are not copied into it, and redacted pages keep no comments, links or form fields. Pages without boxes are copied with whatever comments they had, so remove those first if they are private.
Is my PDF uploaded?
No. Redacting happens in this browser tab, which is the point for private documents.