🖍️ PDF Redaction Tool
Permanently remove sensitive information — draw redaction boxes or use auto‑patterns. All processing stays in your browser — 100% private.
🖱️ Draw to redact
🤖 Auto pattern redaction
🔒 No file upload
Your PDF never leaves your browser – all redaction is local.
Auto‑redact finds matching text on the current page and adds redaction boxes. Review before downloading.
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✏️ Click and drag on the PDF to draw redaction rectangles. Drag existing rectangles to reposition.
No redactions added yet.
🔒 What is PDF Redaction?
Redaction permanently removes sensitive content from a document. Unlike black highlighting or comment boxes, redaction deletes the underlying text or image data. Once redacted, the information cannot be recovered.
Use cases:
- Legal documents (client names, case numbers)
- Medical records (patient identifiers)
- Financial statements (account numbers)
- Internal memos (confidential comments)
🛡️ How Our Redaction Works
- Manual drawing – click and drag over any area to redact.
- Auto‑pattern – detects SSN, credit card, email, phone using regex and adds redaction boxes over matched text regions.
- Client‑side only – your PDF never leaves your browser. The tool uses PDF.js to render and pdf‑lib to create a new PDF with black rectangles.
- Flattened redaction – redaction boxes are drawn as opaque black rectangles, and the original text is not copied to the output PDF.
⚠️ Important – Permanent Removal
Redacted information is permanently removed. Always keep an original copy of your PDF before redacting. The generated PDF contains only visual black boxes – underlying text is not preserved.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
The tool generates a new PDF with black rectangles covering the redacted areas. The original text is not carried over – it is permanently removed from the output file. However, for absolute security, you should also consider flattening and removing metadata.
Yes. For scanned/image‑based PDFs, you can manually draw redaction boxes over the sensitive areas. The auto‑pattern feature works only on selectable text; for images you must draw manually.
The redacted PDF retains non‑redacted text. Only the redacted areas are covered. You can still search for text that hasn't been redacted. The tool does not remove metadata – consider using additional tools for full sanitization.