Private Online Tools

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Nothing is uploaded - the tools run right here

Redact a PDF: black out text so it cannot be copied back

Black out sensitive text in a PDF for good - here in this tab, with nothing uploaded.

How to redact pdf

  1. Drop your PDF in. The black-out panel opens by itself.
  2. Type a word, a name or a pattern - or tick emails, phone numbers, IBANs, card or ID numbers.
  3. Press Count matches to see what will go, then Black them out.
  4. Save the PDF, and check it: try to select or copy the blacked-out text.

Why this one stays private

This is the tool where uploading makes least sense. You are removing a secret from a document - the last thing you should do is send the unredacted original to a server first.

Questions

Can the blacked-out text be recovered?

No. Matching pages are flattened to images, so the words are removed from the file rather than hidden under a rectangle that any reader can lift.

Why do other ways of blacking out a PDF fail?

Most of them draw a black box over text that is still there underneath. A highlighter set to black, a shape in a PDF editor or a box in Word all do this. Copy and paste, or any text extractor, reads straight through it. Burning the page out removes the text itself.

How do I check that the redaction worked?

Open the saved PDF, press Ctrl+A or Cmd+A on a redacted page and paste into a text editor. Nothing from that page comes back, because there is no text left on it to copy.

Can I black out every phone number or email at once?

Yes. Tick a category - email addresses, phone numbers, IBANs, card numbers, ID numbers or dates - or type a regular expression, and every match across the document is blacked out in one pass.

What happens to the rest of a redacted page?

It still looks the same, but it becomes a picture of the page, so you can no longer select or search its text. Pages with no matches are left exactly as they were.

Does it work on scanned PDFs?

Only on PDFs that contain real text. A scan is already a picture, so there is no text for the search to find; it would need to be run through OCR first.

Is it really free, with no upload?

Yes. There is no account, no watermark and no page limit. The PDF is read and redacted inside this browser tab - turn off your Wi-Fi and it still works.

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