Redact PDF
Drop a PDF here or click to choose
Choose a PDF, then drag a rectangle over the text you want to cover.
Drag boxes on the preview. Each box is painted black on that page. The text layer under the box can remain.
How to use
- Open the PDF and drag across the words or the photo region you want covered. Switch pages with the menu and drag again. Boxes stay on the page where you drew them.
- Remove the last box, or clear the page, if the rectangle missed.
- Apply, download, then open the file and try to select the line you covered. If a selection still copies the secret, do not send the file.
Why a black box is not a true redaction
A proper redaction deletes the text, the image, and the invisible copy of those words from the file, then draws black where they were. This page only draws black on top. The original text operators usually remain. Copy, search, and some "inspect content" tools can still read them. That is a real limit of doing this in the browser without rewriting every content stream, and it is why the warning sits above the tool instead of in a footnote.
The check is simple. Download, open, click where the box is, and press select-all or drag. If the hidden name appears in the selection, the redaction failed for your purpose. For a scanned page that is only a picture, with no text layer, a black box does hide the pixels people see, and there is no text to copy. You can confirm that with PDF to Text. If that tool returns empty for the page, the scan has no text layer. If it returns the secret, the black box did not remove it.
Compress PDF redraws pages as JPEG. Running compress after the black boxes turns the visible page into a picture, which often stops text selection. It is still not a certified redaction: a previous version of the file, thumbnails, or metadata can keep the original. Do not use that sequence for a court filing or a medical record and call it redacted. Use a desktop redaction tool when deletion has to be real.
Boxes follow the page you see, including rotated pages, using the same placement as Sign PDF. Draw on the preview, not from memory of a different zoom. A box that stops one word short will leave that word both visible and selectable.
What to do instead for some jobs
A dirty border with no secrets is a crop, not a redaction. Crop also leaves the trimmed strip in the file, which the crop page explains. A whole page you do not want is delete page, not a box. A faint "draft" across the sheet is a watermark.
If you still send a file after this tool, add an open password only as a second step, and only after you have decided the visual cover is enough for that recipient. A password does not delete the text either. It only stops people who do not know the password from opening the file.
Forty pages is the limit. Boxes are stored for the pages you marked. Unmarked pages are copied through unchanged.
Questions
Is this the same as Acrobat Redact?
No. Acrobat redaction can remove the underlying content. This tool paints black and leaves the content in place.
Can I cover a picture?
Yes, on screen. If the picture is an image object, the image bytes can still be inside the file.
Do the boxes print?
Yes, in normal viewers. They are part of the page content, not a comment you can toggle off.
Can I undo after download?
The original file on your disk is not changed. The download is a new file. Remove last box only affects the preview before you apply.