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Redact PDF
Make names, amounts and addresses unreadable, in a way that the text underneath is really gone.
Choose a PDF
or just drag it here.
.PDF ONLY · STAYS ON YOUR DEVICE
You can mark as many areas on each page as you like.
Places a box in the middle of the page. Then move it with the arrow keys, with Shift you change its size.
Nothing marked yet. Drag a rectangle on the page over the area that should disappear.
Drag a rectangle over the area with your mouse or finger. Tapping an existing box selects it: then the arrow keys move it, Shift and the arrow keys change its size, and “Delete” removes it.
Next: Remove metadata · Compress PDF
Your file does not leave this device. Redacting happens in your browser.
How it works
- 01Choose a PDF or drag it into the box.
- 02Go to the page and drag a rectangle with your mouse or finger over every area that should disappear. Several areas per page and across several pages are possible.
- 03Choose the resolution and decide whether only the marked pages or all pages are redrawn.
- 04Tap “Redact and save” and download the new file. Your original stays unchanged.
Why this is safe: Every marked page is drawn as an image by the open-source library pdf.js. The black boxes go into this image. Then the page is replaced by the image and the file is written completely new. The old page content is not carried over: text, fonts and images of the page are no longer in the file afterwards. That is why nothing can be pulled out from underneath anymore.
What it costs: On every redrawn page, the text is an image afterwards. It can no longer be selected, searched or read aloud, links and form fields on that page are lost, and the file usually gets larger. That is why “Marked pages only” is preset: all pages without a mark are taken over unchanged and stay searchable. At 150 dpi an A4 page is easy to read, at 300 dpi it is ready for print and much larger.
What else is in the file: When writing the new file, the tool does not take over the document details of the original, so neither title nor author nor creation date. It enters itself as the producing program (pdf-lib). What is on the unmarked pages, on the other hand, stays completely intact. If you want to know exactly what ends up in the file, open it afterwards with PDF metadata.
Limits: Password-protected PDFs cannot be opened. If a font is not embedded in the PDF, pdf.js uses a font from your system when drawing. The page may then look slightly different. Very large pages such as plans or posters are automatically drawn somewhat smaller, so your browser can handle the area. And the tool does not recognize on its own what is confidential: you decide which areas get redacted.