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What Redact PDF does
Redact PDF blacks out text and images you mark and truly removes them, by flattening each redacted page to an image so nothing survives underneath to be copied or recovered.
The classic redaction disaster is a black rectangle drawn on top of live text. It looks censored, but the words are still in the file — select the area, copy, paste, and the "hidden" text reappears. Governments and law firms have leaked real secrets this way. Redaction only counts if the underlying content is gone, not merely covered.
This tool removes it for real. When you drag a box over a name, a number or a photo, the page it sits on is re-rendered to a flat image with opaque black boxes painted in, and that image replaces the original page. The text and vector content beneath — including the characters under the box — are never written into the output, so there is nothing left to select, search or recover. Everything happens in your browser; a document you are redacting because it is sensitive is never uploaded.
How to use Redact PDF
Upload the PDF
Drop in your file. Every page renders so you can mark it up.
Box what must go
Drag across any text or image you need removed. Draw as many boxes as you like, on as many pages as you like; remove a box with the × on its corner.
Apply and download
Click Apply redaction. The redacted PDF is built on your device and downloads immediately.
Redact PDF: details and limits
Redaction here means removal, not covering. A marked page is flattened to an image, so the content under the black box is gone from the file — not hidden behind a rectangle that can be deleted or copied out.
The trade-off is that a redacted page becomes a picture: all of its text stops being selectable and searchable, not just the part you covered. Pages you don’t mark are copied across untouched and keep their real, selectable text.
Because redacted pages are rebuilt as images, form fields and bookmarks on those specific pages don’t carry over. If your document is a form you still need to fill, redact after filling, or redact a flattened copy.
Check the downloaded file before sending it. Redaction is destructive and cannot be undone from the output, so keep your original if you might need it.
Draw the box a little larger than the text — descenders, italics and wide letters can sit outside the tight glyph bounds.