filetity

PDF -> REDACTED PDF · Local tool

Redact PDF

Black out parts of a PDF so the text underneath is actually removed.

Last updated

How do I redact a PDF so the text is actually gone?

filetity's redact tool removes the text rather than covering it. Drawing a black rectangle over text in a PDF editor leaves the words in the file, selectable and searchable, which is how redacted court filings have leaked. Here you drag boxes over anything private, and the tool redraws every page as a picture with the boxes painted into the pixels, then rebuilds the PDF from those pictures. The covered text is never encoded into the result, so there is nothing to lift off. The cost is that the whole PDF becomes images and nothing in it is searchable afterwards. The file is processed in your browser and never uploaded.

  1. 01 / Your device

    the file stays here

  2. 02 / Browser memory

    the work runs locally

  3. 03 / Back to you

    saved on this device

When you would use this

Situations, not settings.

A bank statement a landlord or a visa office asked for
Black out the account number and the transactions that are nobody's business. Those numbers are not in the file you send, not hidden behind a box in it.
A contract going to someone who must not see the price
Cover the figures and the other party's details. What arrives is a picture of each page with those parts painted out, and nothing under the paint survives.
A medical letter an employer needs to see
The dates and the sick note stay; the diagnosis goes. Search the result afterwards and the word is simply not there.

How it works / no cloud

A conversion engine, not an upload form.

Drawing a black rectangle into a PDF does not redact it: the text stays in the file, selectable and one copy and paste away, and that exact mistake has leaked court filings. So this tool never edits the PDF. Every page is drawn to pixels in a Web Worker, the boxes are painted over those pixels in solid black, and the pictures are rebuilt into a new PDF. The text under a box is not covered; it was never encoded. Pages without boxes are redrawn too, so nothing in the result is selectable or searchable, which is the trade that makes the redaction hold. The boxes are stored as fractions of the page and rounded outward to whole pixels, so a box never comes out a pixel smaller than the one you drew. Everything happens in your browser.

  • Offline ready
  • Installable app
  • No file limit queue

Straight answers

No accordion. Nothing hidden.

Is it free?
Yes, with no watermark and no page limit.
Does it need an account?
No. There is no account system.
Is my file processed on my device?
Yes. The file is read by your browser and never uploaded. There is no server to send it to.
What formats are supported?
Any PDF in. PDF out, every page an image with the boxes painted on.
What are the limits?
The result is a picture of each page: nothing is selectable, searchable or readable by a screen reader, and the file usually gets bigger. A password protected PDF is refused; remove the password first. What you draw is what is removed, so check every page before you send it, and keep the original.
Does it work on mobile?
Yes, on any modern mobile browser. Large files are limited by the memory the phone gives the browser.
Does it work offline?
Yes, once the page has loaded. The tool keeps working with no network connection.
Is the text under the box really gone, or only covered?
Gone. The tool does not add a black rectangle to your PDF; it redraws every page as a picture and paints the box into the pixels before the picture is saved. There is no layer to remove and no text object underneath. You can check the result yourself: open it, press Ctrl+A or Cmd+A, and nothing selects, then search for a word you covered and nothing is found.
Why is the redacted PDF no longer searchable?
Because that is what makes the redaction hold. A PDF whose text is still text can always give that text back, so the whole document becomes pictures of pages, including the pages you did not touch. If you need a searchable copy, keep the original for yourself and send the redacted one.
Can it find and redact a word or a pattern automatically?
No. You draw every box by hand and what you draw is what is removed. Search-based redaction needs to trust that it found every occurrence, including the ones in images and scans, and a tool that misses one has done worse than nothing. Drawing is slower and it is honest.
Does it remove metadata, bookmarks and attachments too?
Yes, by construction. The result is a new PDF built from the page pictures alone, so the original's metadata, bookmarks, form fields, comments, attachments and hidden layers are not carried across. The file name is still yours to change.
How big will the redacted file be?
Usually bigger than the original. A page of text is a few kilobytes as text and a few hundred as a picture. Pages are drawn at about 144 DPI and saved as JPEG, which reads clearly on screen and prints acceptably.
Why was my PDF refused?
It is password protected. The pages cannot be drawn without the password, and the tool refuses rather than handing back a file it did nothing to. Remove the password on this site first, then come back.

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