Black out names, account numbers, addresses or signatures in a PDF before you share it. Draw boxes on the pages or search for words and email addresses, and the text under every box is removed from the file, not just hidden behind a black shape. Free, no watermark, and the PDF never leaves your device.
No PDF yet. You can also drop a file on this box.
Drag on a page to draw a box. Click a box to remove it.
Drawing a black rectangle over text in a PDF editor, or highlighting it in black, only covers it. The text is still in the file: anyone can select it, copy and paste it, or run pdftotext and read it. Court filings and government reports have leaked names and figures exactly this way. A real redaction removes the content itself.
This tool redraws every page that has a box as an image, with the boxes burned into the pixels. The original text, fonts and vector drawings of that page are not copied into the new PDF, so there is nothing left under the black to recover. Pages without boxes are copied unchanged and keep their selectable text.
| Step | What to do |
|---|---|
| 1. Open | Pick or drop the PDF. All pages are shown below the buttons. |
| 2. Mark | Type names or numbers and press Find, or drag boxes over anything else: signatures, photos, stamps, handwriting. Click a box to remove it. On a phone, switch "Dragging on a page" to Scrolls to move around. |
| 3. Check | Scroll through every page. Search only finds text that is real text in the PDF; scanned pages need boxes drawn by hand. |
| 4. Download | Press Redact and download. The tool then reads the text of the new file and tells you if any search term is still in it. |
On every redacted page: all text, images, links, form fields and comments are replaced by one image of the page. In the whole file: the title, author and other metadata, bookmarks, and links that jump to other pages. Pages you did not mark keep their text, fonts and web links.
The text search works on whole words and phrases within one line. A name split across two lines, or a word in an image or a scan, needs a box drawn by hand.
If the PDFs you redact are invoices, reports or exports your own app produces, the simplest redaction is to never render the sensitive fields. The Shotmint API turns a URL or an HTML template into a PDF in Chromium, so you control exactly what goes in:
curl "https://shotmint.creasework.com/v1/pdf?url=https://example.com&format=A4" -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" -o page.pdfEach render is 1 credit. €5 buys 2,000 with no subscription, and credits never expire. Try HTML to PDF or URL to PDF without a key.
Get 25 free renders a month API docs
Is my PDF uploaded? No. Everything runs in JavaScript on this page, so contracts, bank statements, medical records and ID scans stay on your device.
Can someone undo the redaction? Not from the file itself: the redacted pages contain only pixels, and the black areas hold no hidden text. Check the result anyway, and also look for the same details in places the box did not cover, such as headers, footers and file names.
Why is the redacted page no longer selectable? Because its text was removed. That is what makes it safe. Use a higher image quality if the page has small print.
Is it free? Yes, with no sign-up, no watermark and no page limit beyond your device's memory.
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