Black Out Sensitive Information in a PDF
Draw boxes over the parts you want gone — permanently, not just covered up.
How it works
1. Upload your PDF. 2. Draw a box over each part you want to black out — on any page. 3. Download — those areas are permanently removed, not just covered.
Is the content actually removed, or just covered with a black box?
Actually removed. A page you redact is converted into a flattened image with the marked areas painted black before flattening — so there's no text or hidden data left underneath to copy, select, or recover. This is different from tools that just draw a box on top, which someone can delete or see through by copying the text underneath.
Does this affect pages I didn't mark?
No — only pages with at least one redaction box are converted to images. Pages you leave alone keep their original text, quality, and file size.
Will the redacted page's text still be selectable or searchable?
No, and that's intentional — the whole page becomes one flattened image once anything on it is redacted, which is what guarantees the hidden content can't be recovered.
Can I undo a redaction after I've downloaded the file?
No. Once you download, the redacted pages are baked into a new PDF and there's no getting the original content back. You can still remove or adjust a box before you download, though — nothing is final until you export.
Can I search for a word and redact every instance of it automatically?
No — this tool only redacts what you draw a box over. If a name or number appears five times in your PDF, you have to box out all five yourself. There's no find-and-redact-all feature.
Will my file get bigger after redacting?
Usually, yes. Any page with a redaction on it gets turned into a compressed image instead of live text, so even redacting one line can make that page's file size bigger than it was originally — that's the tradeoff for making the content truly unrecoverable.
Does redacting also strip hidden metadata, like the author's name or document title?
Yes, as a side effect. The output is built as a brand-new PDF rather than a patched copy of your original, so metadata like the author and title from your source file doesn't carry over.