Redact a PDF

Drawing a black rectangle over text does not remove it — the words stay in the file and come straight back out with copy-and-paste. That mistake has leaked real documents. Here, any page carrying a redaction is rendered to pixels with the redacted areas painted opaque, and the original text is not present in the saved file at all.

How to do it

1. Open the PDF.
2. Choose the redaction tool and drag over anything to remove.
3. Download. Pages with redactions are flattened; the rest are untouched.
4. Check the result by trying to select text in the redacted area.

Why nothing is uploaded

Most online PDF tools work by sending your file to a server, editing it there, and sending it back. That means contracts, medical records, bank statements and passports all end up on someone else's machine, and you are trusting a privacy policy about what happens next.

This editor does the work in your browser instead. The PDF is read by this tab, rendered with pdf.js and written back out with pdf-lib, both running as ordinary JavaScript on your own device. There is no upload endpoint, because there is no server doing any of this. Once the page has loaded you can disconnect from the network entirely and everything still works.

Questions

Is my file uploaded?

No. Everything happens in this browser tab, on your own device. There is no upload endpoint and no server-side processing, so the file never leaves your machine — you can disconnect from the network after the page loads and it still works.

Is the text really removed?

Yes. The page is re-rendered as an image with the redaction painted on, and that image replaces the page. There is no text object left behind to select, search or extract — which is not true of tools that simply draw a filled rectangle.

What does redaction cost me?

Redacted pages become images: their text is no longer selectable or searchable and the file is larger. Only pages you actually redact are affected; everything else keeps its original text.

What about the metadata?

Worth clearing too. The document properties panel and the "remove metadata" option in the password panel strip the author, timestamps and any embedded scripts or attachments.

Related tools

• Password-protect a PDF — Add a password and set permissions on a PDF. AES-256 encryption applied in your browser — the document and the password never leave your device.
• Sign a PDF — Draw, type or upload a signature and place it on any page. Runs entirely in your browser, so the document you are signing is never uploaded.
• Delete pages from a PDF — Remove unwanted pages from a PDF and save the rest. Runs entirely in your browser with no upload.
• The full editor — annotate, sign, fill forms, redact, OCR and more.

Part of messy-ui. Free, open source and account-free — see also the countdown timer.