Redact a PDF
Redact PDF on ilovspdfs removes content for good: every page you draw a box on is rasterised with the box painted black and replaced by that image, so the text underneath ceases to exist instead of hiding under a rectangle. Pages without a box are untouched. It runs in your browser; the file is never uploaded.
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.pdf · up to 100.0 MB
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About this tool
Redaction has a long history of going wrong in public, and always the same way: a black box drawn over a name, the file published, and the name still sitting in the text underneath for anyone who selects it. This tool takes the one approach that cannot fail that way. Every page you draw a box on is rendered to an image at high resolution, the box is painted black onto that image, and the image replaces the page. Nothing of the original page's text, vectors or annotations survives on it, which you can verify yourself by trying to select text on the result. The price is stated up front: redacted pages are pictures, so their text is no longer selectable or searchable, and they are larger. Pages you leave alone are exactly as they were.
How to redact a PDF
- 1Choose the PDF and draw a box over each thing to remove.
- 2Check every page you marked, because the whole page becomes an image.
- 3Download the redacted document.
At a glance
| What it does | Remove content for good by rasterising the pages you mark. |
|---|---|
| Where it runs | In your browser, on this device. The file is never uploaded. |
| Accepts | |
| Files per job | One at a time |
| Maximum file size | 100 MB |
| Price | Free. No account, no sign-in, no watermark. |
| Status | Working |
Questions
- Do my files get uploaded to a server?
- No. This tool runs entirely inside your browser tab. Your file is read into memory, changed on your own machine, and handed straight back to you as a download. Nothing is transmitted, so there is nothing on our side to store or delete.
- Is the text really gone?
- Yes. The page is replaced by an image of itself with the box painted over, so there is no text object left to recover. Open the result and try to select text on a redacted page: there is none.
- Why does the whole page lose its selectable text?
- Because removing only the marked words from a page's drawing instructions, and from every font, image and annotation that might also hold them, is exactly the step redaction tools get wrong. Replacing the page is the version that can be checked.
- Does it work without an internet connection?
- Once the page has loaded, yes. The processing code runs locally, so you can disconnect and the tool will still work. That is also a simple way to verify the privacy claim for yourself.
Also called Black out text in a PDF, Remove sensitive data from a PDF.