Loading your local toolbox…
Every few months a government or company publishes a document with black rectangles over sensitive text — and someone copies the text straight out from underneath. Do not be that document.
No upload. No watermark. No sign-up. Every tool mentioned here runs inside your browser.
Drawing a rectangle is a visual operation. The text object is still in the file, in the content stream, fully readable by copy-paste, search, or any text extractor.
Real redaction means the characters are no longer present in the file at all.
Covered — the text is hidden behind an opaque box. Nothing is visible, but a determined reader can still extract it. Fine for casual sharing, not for publication.
Burned in — the page is rasterised after covering, so the PDF no longer contains text objects at all. Nothing is recoverable. This is what you want before publishing.
Run the Redaction Checker with the terms you removed. It extracts every character still in the file and tells you whether any of them survived.
Then strip the metadata — a redacted file that still lists the author and creation software can leak more than you think.
Only after both steps is the file safe to send.
Yes — that is the point. You trade searchability for genuine removal.
Redaction applies wherever the terms match. To limit it, split the document first.
Loading your local toolbox…