peartools

Redact PDF

Drag a box over any name, number, or paragraph that has to go. The pages you mark are rebuilt as pictures with the boxes burned in, so the words underneath are removed from the file instead of covered up. Everything runs in your browser, and nothing is uploaded.

Drag and drop your PDF here, or

Up to 100 MB. Everything runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded.

What redacting a PDF means

Redacting is removing information from a document before you share it, while leaving the rest of the document intact and readable. It is what the black bars in a released report are: everything the public is allowed to see, and nothing else.

The word covers two very different things in practice. Covering information means drawing something over it. Removing it means the information is no longer in the file. Only the second one is redaction, and the difference is the whole point of this tool.

Here you drag boxes over what has to go, and the pages carrying those boxes are rendered to pixels, painted over, and rebuilt from the image. What comes out has no text layer on those pages, so there is nothing left under the black to select, copy, search, or extract.

Why use our PDF redaction tool

  • ·The text is really removed. Flattening throws the words away rather than hiding them behind a shape.
  • ·Nothing is uploaded. A document you are redacting is exactly the kind you should not be handing to a server. This one never leaves your tab.
  • ·Only the pages that need it. Unmarked pages are copied through untouched, so the rest of the file stays searchable and small.
  • ·Document details dropped. The new file does not carry over the original title, author, or producer.
  • ·Free. No signup, no page limit, and no watermark on the result.

Why a black box on its own hides nothing

A PDF page is a list of instructions: put this word here, draw this line there, fill this rectangle. When you draw a black rectangle over a name in a PDF editor, you add one instruction to the end of that list. The instruction that draws the name is still in the file, further up. You cannot see it any more, but the file has not forgotten it.

Which means anyone can get it back, and not with special tools. Select the area and copy it. Search the document for a word you suspect is there. Save it as plain text. Open it in almost any PDF editor and move the rectangle. Failed redactions have leaked names out of court filings, legal briefs, and government reports for years, and the cause is nearly always this: the shape was added, the words were not removed.

Highlighting in yellow, painting with a white shape, and covering with an image all fail the same way. So does exporting to a different format and back, if the text survives the round trip.

Flattening breaks the chain. The page is rendered into a grid of pixels exactly as a reader would see it, the boxes are painted onto those pixels, and the finished picture becomes the page. There is no list of words any more, only an image, and the pixels where the name used to be are solid black. Copy the area and you get nothing, because there is nothing there.

One thing to remember: redaction only removes what you cover. If a name appears in a header on page nine as well as in the paragraph on page two, both need a box. Read the whole document before you send it, and check the file properties too. Our PDF metadata viewer shows what is stored in the document details, which is a common place for an author name to survive a careful redaction.

How to redact a PDF

  1. 1

    Add your PDF

    Drag the file onto the box or click to pick it. It stays in your browser and is never uploaded, which is the first thing that matters when a document has something in it worth hiding.

  2. 2

    Drag a box over anything private

    Press and drag across a name, an address, an account number, a salary, or a whole paragraph. Add as many boxes as you like, on as many pages as you like. The × on a box removes it.

  3. 3

    Choose how far the flattening goes

    By default only the pages you marked are turned into pictures, so the rest of the document stays searchable. Switch to every page when nothing anywhere should be copyable.

  4. 4

    Download the redacted PDF

    The marked pages are rendered, covered, and rebuilt as a new file. The words under the black are not hidden, they are gone, and the document details are left out too.

What a flattened page gives up

Turning a page into a picture costs you three things, and it is worth knowing them before you send the file on.

Searchable text. Nobody can select or search the words on a flattened page, including you. If the recipient needs to quote from the document, that will annoy them. Keeping the default setting, where only the pages you marked are flattened, limits this to the pages that actually needed it.

File size. A page of text is a few kilobytes; the same page as an image is a few hundred. Dropping to 110 or 150 dpi and using the smaller file option keeps this under control, and 150 dpi is perfectly readable on screen. Go to 300 dpi only if the result will be printed.

Links and form fields. Anything interactive on a flattened page stops working, because a picture has no clickable areas. Links on pages you did not mark are unaffected.

Who redacts PDFs

Anyone who has to hand over a document that says more than the recipient needs to know. These are the most common cases:

  • ·Anyone sharing a bank statement or a payslip. Landlords, lenders, and letting agents ask for statements. Black out the account number, the balance, and the transactions that are nobody's business.
  • ·Lawyers and paralegals. Remove privileged passages, client names, and third party details from a document before it goes out in disclosure or to the other side.
  • ·HR and recruitment. Strip names, addresses, and dates of birth out of a CV or a report so it can be shared for a blind review or passed to a hiring panel.
  • ·Journalists and researchers. Publish a source document while keeping a name, a phone number, or an address out of it, in a way that survives someone opening the file and pressing select all.

If whole pages have to come out rather than parts of them, delete pages from the PDF instead, and use our PDF metadata remover to clear the details stored inside the file.

Frequently asked questions

How do I redact a PDF for free?
Add your PDF, drag a box over everything private, and download. The pages you marked are turned into pictures with the boxes burned in, so the text underneath is not part of the file any more. There is no signup and nothing is uploaded.
Can redacted text be recovered from a PDF?
It depends entirely on how it was redacted. If someone drew a black rectangle over the words and saved the file, the words are still in there and anyone can select, copy, or search them, because the rectangle is just another object drawn on top. This tool does not do that. It renders the page to pixels, paints over the pixels, and rebuilds the page from the image, so there is nothing left underneath to recover.
Why does my redacted PDF lose its selectable text?
That is the trade, and it is the reason the redaction works. A flattened page is a picture, so its text can no longer be selected, copied, or searched, and links and form fields on that page stop working. Keep the default setting and only the pages you marked are flattened, so the rest of the document keeps its real text.
Why is the redacted file bigger than the original?
A page of text stored as text is tiny. The same page stored as a picture is not. If size matters, drop the resolution to 110 or 150 dpi and use the smaller file option, which saves the pages as JPEG. Only flattening the pages you marked also keeps the rest of the document at its original size.
Does this remove the hidden document details too?
The new file is built from scratch, so the title, author, subject, keywords, and producer of the original are not carried over. Note that pages you did not mark are copied across as they are, which keeps any annotations that were on them. To clean the details out of a file you are not redacting, use our PDF metadata remover.
Can I redact only some pages?
Yes, and that is the default. Draw boxes on the pages that need them and those pages are flattened; every other page is copied straight through untouched, keeping its text, links, and file size.
Should I use black boxes or white ones?
Black is the convention and it makes the redaction obvious, which is usually what you want in a document that will be reviewed. White simply wipes the area clean, which suits a form or a template where you want the space to look empty rather than censored.
Are my PDF files private?
Yes. The file is opened, rendered, covered, and rebuilt inside your browser tab. It is never uploaded to a server, never saved anywhere, and once the page has loaded the tool keeps working offline.

Always open the finished file and check it before you share it. Redaction removes what you covered, and only what you covered.