discreetpdf.com

Redact a PDF

A black rectangle drawn on top of text is not redaction: the words are still in the file and come back with a copy-paste. This rebuilds the affected pages so the content is gone, then verifies it.

  1. 1.Open your PDF.
  2. 2.Drag a box over each thing you want removed.
  3. 3.Apply the redaction. The marked pages are rebuilt without the original content.
  4. 4.Save the redacted PDF.

Files are processed entirely in your browser. Your file's contents never leave your device.

Your PDF never touches a server. There's nothing here to ration.

No daily caps. No spinner that turns into a paywall after the third file.

Private by architecture

Your PDF never leaves your device.

Unlimited use

No daily caps or hourly throttling. The heavier tools cap files at 100 MB.

No signup, no watermarks

Every tool below works with or without an account.

Works offline

A tool you've already loaded keeps working offline. Tools you haven't opened yet still need the network.

About this tool

Drawing a black box over a name is not redaction. In most PDF tools that box is just another shape painted on top, and the text underneath is still sitting in the file: copy and paste, or open it in a different reader, and it comes straight back. That is how redaction failures keep ending up in the news. Real redaction has to destroy the content, not cover it.

This tool removes it. Mark the regions you want gone, and the pages carrying them are rebuilt from scratch with those areas painted out before anything is written to the file. The document is then rewritten as a single revision, so no earlier draft of the page is left behind inside it, and the metadata is stripped. Afterwards the output is re-opened and checked: if any text survives on a page you redacted, you get an error instead of a file.

It runs entirely in your browser. That matters more here than anywhere else in this app, because the thing you are redacting is, by definition, the thing you would least want to upload. Your file never leaves your device. One honest trade-off: a page you redact is flattened to an image, so its text is no longer selectable and the file gets larger. Pages you don't touch are left exactly as they were.

Frequently asked questions

Is the text really gone, or just hidden?
Gone. The pages you mark are re-rendered and rebuilt so the original text objects are not carried into the new file, and the marked areas are painted out before the page is saved. The output is then re-opened and scanned; if any extractable text remains on a redacted page, the tool refuses to give you the file rather than hand you something that looks safe but isn't.
Can someone recover it by undoing the black box?
There is nothing to undo. The box is not a shape layered on top of the text. The text is not in the output at all. The file is also written as a single revision, so an earlier version of the page is not tucked away inside it the way an incremental save would leave one.
Why does my redacted page lose selectable text?
Because flattening the page to an image is what makes the removal airtight: there is no text layer left to leak. Only the pages you mark are flattened; every other page keeps its selectable text. A vector-preserving mode that keeps the rest of the page as real text is planned.
Does it remove hidden data too?
Yes. Along with the on-page content, it strips document metadata, embedded JavaScript, file attachments, and page thumbnails (a thumbnail is a small picture of the page that can otherwise leak what you removed), then structurally rewrites the file so nothing is left orphaned inside it. Two things to review separately if they matter: comments on pages you did not redact are kept as-is, and filled-in form values stay visible on the page, though the fields themselves generally stop being editable, because the rebuild does not carry the PDF form dictionary across.
Is my file uploaded?
No. The rendering, the removal, and the rewrite all happen locally in your browser. The document never leaves your device, so there is no server copy to worry about, which is the whole reason to redact here rather than on a site that asks you to upload first.

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