How to redact a PDF, step by step
Redacting a PDF should make the hidden information impossible to recover — not just invisible. Here's how to do it correctly in under a minute, free and entirely in your browser.
Steps
- Open your PDF. Go to the redactor and drop in your PDF. It loads in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
- Mark what to hide. Drag a box over each sensitive area, or use auto-detect to find SSNs, emails, and names.
- Redact. Click Redact. The text and its glyph positions are removed and the region is rasterized.
- Verify and download. The built-in audit confirms nothing is recoverable, then you download the safe file.
Why these steps matter
Most online "redactors" stop at drawing a box, which leaves the text recoverable. The steps above remove the text from the content stream, erase the glyph geometry that could reconstruct it, strip metadata and history, and then verify the result. That verification — attacking your own output before trusting it — is what separates real redaction from a cosmetic black box. Read the full technical explanation.