Redact PDF — Permanently Remove Sensitive Text

Drawing a black rectangle over text in most PDF editors does not remove it — the words stay underneath and can be selected, copied, or recovered, which is how redaction failures leak information. This tool rebuilds each redacted page as a flattened image with the text permanently discarded, so there is nothing left underneath to recover.

How to censor text in your browser

  1. 1Add the PDF containing information you need to remove.
  2. 2Drag a box over every piece of text that must be hidden. Use the page selector to work through the document.
  3. 3Click Censor Text. Redacted pages are rebuilt from scratch with the underlying text deleted.
  4. 4Download the redacted file and verify by trying to select text in the blacked-out areas — there will be none.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can the redacted text be recovered from the file?

No. Pages containing redactions are rasterised and rebuilt as new image-only pages, and the original text objects are discarded entirely rather than merely hidden. We verified this by planting a known string, redacting it, and confirming it no longer appears anywhere in the decompressed output.

Why do the redacted pages become images?

Flattening is what guarantees removal. If the page kept its text layer, the hidden words would still exist in the file behind the black box. The trade-off is that text on redacted pages is no longer selectable — pages you did not redact keep their real text untouched.

Does this remove hidden metadata too?

Redacted pages are rebuilt, so page-level hidden content on them is discarded. Document-level metadata such as author and title is not stripped by this tool — remove that separately if it is sensitive.

Are my files uploaded to a server?

No. This tool runs entirely inside your browser using WebAssembly — your file is never uploaded, never stored on a server, and never seen by us. You can confirm it by opening your browser's Network tab while the tool runs, or by disconnecting from the internet after the page loads: it still works.