Why a black box is usually not redaction
A PDF page is a list of drawing instructions. Most tools "redact" by adding one more to the end of that list — *fill this rectangle with black*. The instructions that drew the text are still there, earlier in the same list, completely untouched. The page looks censored. Select the area, copy, and paste, and the text comes straight back.
This is not a theoretical problem. Readers recovered the blacked-out passages of the Paul Manafort court filings by copying and pasting, and a batch of released Justice Department documents was un-redacted the same way. In both cases the people doing the redacting believed they had done it.
What this tool does instead
Mark the areas
Drag across anything that should go. Click a black box to remove it again.
The page is flattened
Every marked page is redrawn as an image with the boxes painted into it. The text is not covered — after this the page contains no text at all, so there is nothing left to recover.
The result is checked
The finished file is read back and every redacted page must return zero readable items. You see that count before you download anything.
The trade-off, stated plainly
Flattening a page is a real cost and you should know it before you download the file, not after.
| On a redacted page | What happens |
|---|---|
| Text under the box | Gone. Not covered — absent from the file. |
| Other text on the same page | Still visible, but no longer selectable or searchable. |
| File size | Usually larger, because the page becomes an image. |
| Links and form fields on that page | Lost. |
| Pages with no redactions | Untouched — text, links and all. |
There are tools that edit the text out while leaving the rest of the page intact. Done correctly that is better; done slightly wrong it leaves fragments behind and reports success anyway. Flattening is the version whose safety can actually be demonstrated, so it is the one used here.
Checking a file that was redacted elsewhere
Load any PDF and press “Show me what a machine can read”. It lists every piece of text a script could pull out of the file, page by page. If you see something you thought was hidden, it was never hidden.
This is worth doing to a document before you send it on, and worth doing to anything you have redacted in the past with a drawing tool.
What happens to your document
Nothing leaves your device. There is no upload, nothing stored, and nothing for us to delete. That matters more here than anywhere else on this site: a document worth redacting is, by definition, one you should not be handing to a stranger’s server.
You can confirm it. Open your browser’s developer tools, switch to the Network tab and redact something — no request carries your file. Or disconnect from the internet after the page loads and use it anyway.
Frequently asked questions
Is the text really removed, or just hidden?
Removed. A redacted page is rebuilt as an image, so it contains no text at all — not the part you covered and not the rest. The finished file is then read back and checked, and the count of readable items on each redacted page is shown to you before you download it.
Why is my redacted page no longer selectable?
Because that is what makes it safe. Keeping the page selectable means keeping its text, and keeping its text is how redactions leak. Pages you did not mark are untouched and stay selectable.
How do I check whether an old PDF was redacted properly?
Load it here and press “Show me what a machine can read”. It shows every string extractable from the file. If the supposedly redacted content appears in that list, the redaction failed.
Is my document uploaded?
No. Everything runs in your browser. Check the Network tab in your browser’s developer tools while you use it, or disconnect from the internet after the page has loaded.
Does this remove metadata and hidden data too?
Redacted pages are rebuilt from scratch, so anything that lived in those pages is gone. Document-level metadata such as the title and author is not carried into the new file either. It does not strip metadata from pages you left untouched, so if a document is sensitive throughout, redact something on every page or treat metadata separately.
Can I redact a password-protected PDF?
Not directly. Remove the password first — most PDF readers let you open it with the password and save a copy without one.
Related tools
- Split PDF
Pull out the pages you need, or break a document into one file per page — without uploading anything.
- Merge PDF
Join several PDFs into one document, in the order you choose — without uploading anything.
- JPG to PDF
Turn photos, scans and screenshots into a single PDF — in the order you choose, without uploading anything.
Guides worth reading
- Why PDF redaction fails— The text under the rectangle is still in the file, and anyone can copy it out. Here is why it happens, how to check a document you have already sent, and what actually works.
- Does this tool upload my file?— Two checks that take under a minute and do not require trusting anybody’s privacy policy — plus which operations genuinely need a server and which do not.