Redact PDF

Drawing a black box over a name in a PDF editor often only hides it: the text underneath can still be copied, searched or recovered. This tool performs true redaction. It finds every occurrence of the words, phrases, email addresses, phone or ID numbers you choose, paints solid boxes over them and rebuilds those pages from a picture, so the original text is gone from the file. It then searches the saved file again to confirm nothing is left. It all runs in your browser.

How to use this tool

1. Choose the PDF (several files get the same redaction).
2. Type the names or phrases to hide, one per line, and tick email, phone or long-number detection if needed.
3. Choose box colour, page quality and whether to strip document properties.
4. Download the redacted PDF and check "Matches left after redaction" is 0.

Formula

Text is read with its position on the page. For each match, the box runs from the start to the end of the matched characters along the text line and from 28% of the font size below the baseline to 100% above it, so descenders and accents are covered.

Pages with a match are rendered at the chosen resolution without comments or form fields, the boxes are painted, and the page is replaced by that image. Unreferenced objects (the old page content) are then removed before saving.

Example

A 10-page contract mentions "Jane Doe" 6 times on pages 1, 4 and 10 and her email twice. With "Jane Doe" typed and email detection on, the result shows 8 matches redacted on 3 pages and 0 matches left after the check; the other 7 pages are untouched and stay fully selectable.