PDF Redactor

PDF PRIVACY REDACT

About this tool

True redaction — bytes removed, not just covered

Draw rectangles to redact sensitive content. Redacted pages are flattened to images so the text cannot be recovered. 100% in your browser.

RT-IMG-018 · Image & File

Drop a PDF here or click to choose Drag rectangles on each page to mark text for destructive redaction

This is destructive redaction. Redacted pages are FLATTENED to images at the DPI you choose. Text underneath the redaction rectangles is permanently removed from the output PDF — it cannot be recovered by copy, search, or forensic extraction. Non-redacted pages keep their original text intact. Always verify the output before sharing — what you can't see in the preview, you may have missed.

Flatten DPI:

💡 How to draw: click and drag on any thumbnail to mark a rectangle. Each card's Clear button removes all redactions on that page. The output preserves text on pages with no redaction rectangles — only redacted pages get flattened.

Drop a PDF to begin.

🔒 PDFs stay on your device. Thumbnails are rendered via self-hosted pdf.js. Redaction + flattening happen via pdf-lib. Nothing is uploaded — verify in DevTools → Network.

How to redact a PDF

Add your PDF

Drag your file onto the dropzone or click to choose. The tool renders a large thumbnail of every page so you can draw redactions accurately.

Draw redaction rectangles

Click and drag on any page thumbnail to mark a rectangle. The rectangle appears as a semitransparent red box while you're drawing, then as a solid black overlay once you release. You can draw multiple rectangles per page.

Pick a flattening DPI

150 DPI is recommended — sharp text, reasonable file size. 100 DPI for smaller output (text may look slightly soft). 200-300 DPI for print-quality output (larger files).

Apply and verify

Click Apply redactions and download. The output saves as {original}-redacted.pdf. Open the output and verify before sharing. Redacted pages are flattened images — try copying text from a redacted area to confirm it returns nothing.

PDF redaction — done right, not just covered up

The most common — and most dangerous — mistake in PDF redaction is to draw a black rectangle on top of the text without removing the underlying content. The page LOOKS redacted in a PDF reader, but the text is still in the file. Copy + paste reveals it. Text search finds it. Any forensic tool extracts it. The 2014 high-profile Manning case, the 2020 Roger Stone redaction failure, and dozens of US government and corporate document releases since have all leaked content this way. Cosmetic redaction is not redaction.

What "destructive redaction" actually means

True redaction means the redacted content is NOT PRESENT in the output file at all. This tool achieves that by re-rendering each redacted page as a flattened raster image (a JPEG embedded in a new PDF page), with the redaction rectangles drawn as solid black on the image. After flattening, there's no underlying text object remaining. Copy + paste from a redacted region returns nothing. Search finds nothing. There's no recoverable content because there's no content there to recover.

If you can copy-paste from a "redacted" PDF and get the original text, it wasn't redacted. It was decorated. Real redaction removes the bytes.

The trade-off: redacted pages lose searchability

Destructive redaction comes with a cost: the redacted page becomes a single image. The remaining un-redacted text on that page also becomes part of the image — no longer selectable, no longer searchable, slightly fuzzier than the original. That's the necessary price of certainty. For pages you don't mark for redaction, this tool preserves them verbatim — they keep their original text, fonts, links, and form fields. Only redacted pages are flattened. You get the protection where you need it and the searchability where you don't.

The APAC compliance context

Cosmetic-redaction breaches have hit organisations across Singapore (a 2022 PDPC enforcement decision specifically cited "black rectangle drawn without content removal" as a contributing factor in a notifiable breach), Hong Kong's legal sector (the Hong Kong Bar Association has issued guidance specifically warning against cosmetic redaction), Malaysia's public sector (multiple judicial review filings have leaked privileged content through pseudo-redaction), and Australia and Japan's government workflows. The trend is consistent: regulators are increasingly aware that "looks redacted" is not "is redacted," and contractual + statutory obligations are tightening accordingly.

What this tool does — and what it doesn't

This tool destructively redacts rectangular regions you draw on each page. The output is a hybrid PDF: pages with redactions are flattened images with black overlays; pages without are preserved verbatim. What it does NOT do: smart text-region detection (you draw the rectangles manually), OCR-based searching (PDFs with embedded text only — scanned PDFs need OCR first), redaction of annotations or form fields (those are document-level objects this tool doesn't touch), or partial-word redaction within a text line (you can draw a tight rectangle that visually covers part of a word, but the line itself becomes a flattened image either way). For non-rectangular or word-aware redaction, Adobe Acrobat Pro's redaction tool is the right choice.

10 Things to Know About PDF Redaction

Drawing a black rectangle on a PDF page does NOT remove the underlying text. PDFs are layered — text and graphics can sit on top of each other independently.

The Roger Stone court filing in 2020 leaked classified content through black-rectangle "redaction" that left the text fully searchable in the file.

True redaction removes the underlying bytes. This tool achieves that by flattening redacted pages to images — the text is no longer present in the output.

Flattening means the redacted page becomes a single JPEG image embedded in the new PDF. Text on that page can no longer be selected, searched, or copied — by design.

Non-redacted pages in the output keep their original text, fonts, links, and form fields. The flattening only applies to pages where you draw rectangles.

150 DPI is the sweet spot for document redaction — sharp text, reasonable file size. Higher DPI is for print; lower DPI for online-only delivery.

Adobe Acrobat Pro's "Redact" feature does the same flattening internally — there's no magic. The advantage of Acrobat is search-and-redact (find all instances of a phrase). Our tool requires you to draw each rectangle manually.

The Singapore PDPC's 2022 advisory on data sanitisation specifically calls out cosmetic redaction as a non-compliant practice for PDPA breach response.

Even with destructive redaction, METADATA (author, dates, comments) is preserved unless you also use our PDF Metadata Cleaner tool. For a complete sanitisation pass, run both tools.

Always verify the output. Open the redacted PDF in any reader, try selecting text in a redacted region — if you get nothing, the redaction worked. Pasting the redacted region's "text" into a notepad is the simplest forensic check.

FAQ

No. pdf.js renders thumbnails, pdf-lib applies the redaction and re-saves — all in your browser. Open DevTools → Network and watch when you click Apply: there's no outbound traffic. For redaction workflows specifically, this matters because the document you're redacting is often the most sensitive one you have.
Yes — for the content under the rectangles you drew. Redacted pages are flattened to JPEG images and re-embedded. There is no underlying text object remaining, so copy + paste, search, and forensic extraction all return nothing. Verify with your own copy + paste test on the output before sharing.
The whole page is flattened to an image, including non-redacted text. The non-redacted text remains visible (rendered into the image) but is no longer selectable or searchable. This is the trade-off of destructive redaction. If preserving searchability of un-redacted text is critical, accept the cosmetic-redaction risk consciously — but understand it's not real redaction.
Yes. Only pages where you draw redaction rectangles are flattened. Pages with no rectangles are copied byte-for-byte from the source — their text remains selectable, searchable, and copyable.
150 DPI is the safe default — sharp text, reasonable file size. Use 100 DPI for online-only sharing (smaller files). Use 200-300 DPI if the output will be printed (Adobe recommends 300 DPI for print). Higher DPI = larger file but no quality difference once the document is viewed on screen.
No — metadata (author, creation date, producer, etc.) is preserved. For complete sanitisation including metadata, run our PDF Metadata Cleaner tool on the redacted output. Many genuine document leaks happen via metadata even when the visual redaction is correct.
Yes, with caveats. The redaction will visually cover the regions you mark, and the output flattens the image — so the redacted areas are unrecoverable visually. However, if there's no text layer in the source (no OCR was applied), the original was never copy-paste extractable anyway.
Open the output PDF in Adobe Acrobat or any PDF reader. Click and drag to try selecting text in a redacted area. If you can select nothing, the redaction worked. Then try a text search for a phrase that should have been redacted — it should not be found. Both tests need to pass.
Restriction-only protection (no-print, no-edit) is bypassed via pdf-lib's ignoreEncryption flag. Open-password protection is not — remove the password in Adobe Acrobat or macOS Preview first, then redact here.
Yes on iOS Safari and Chrome on Android. Drawing rectangles by touch works the same as desktop. The thumbnail grid reflows to one column on phones. For accuracy when drawing small redactions, desktop or tablet is recommended.

PDF Redactor