How to redact a PDF in your browser

Redact a PDF in five steps

1. Open the PDF. Open LocalRedactor and drop the PDF on the page, or choose it from your device. The file is read into your browser’s memory. It is not uploaded. A file up to 50 MB opens; a password-protected file is refused with a plain message.
2. Find what to hide. Use Find to search for a word, a name or a number. Step through the matches with Next and Previous, then press Mark all to turn every match into a mark. For account numbers, tax IDs, emails and similar, switch on a type of sensitive data and the app lists likely matches the same way. To mark something by hand, add a box and drag it over the area.
3. Review the marks. Every mark is listed with its page. Open a page, look at what each box covers, and delete or redraw any that are wrong. Undo works until you export. Nothing is changed in the file until you export.
4. Export. Choose Export. The app removes the marked text from the page, paints a solid box in its place, removes hidden document information such as the author and the editing software, and then runs a second, separate check on the finished file. If that check fails, nothing is saved.
5. Read the receipt and test the file. After the check passes you get the redacted PDF and can download a short receipt. Then test it yourself: open the saved file, search for the text you removed, and try to copy from under a box.

What “verified” means here

Before a file is saved, a separate program reads the finished bytes and checks five things: the marked text is no longer in the page content, the marked text does not appear anywhere in the raw file, hidden metadata is gone, active content such as scripts is gone, and each box really covers its area. The receipt records the result of each check, the pages and counts involved, and a SHA-256 fingerprint of the saved file.

The receipt never contains the text you removed, a file name, or any value from the document.

Free to try

You can export three redacted files a day without an account. A paid license removes the daily limit. Opening, searching, marking and checking a file costs nothing.

What it does not do

• There is no OCR. In a scanned page the words are a picture, so search cannot find them. You can still draw a box over the picture and the pixels under the box are overwritten.
• Password-protected (encrypted) PDFs are refused. Remove the password in the program that made the file, then open it here.
• Search finds what the file holds as text. Text drawn as shapes, or text inside an image, needs a box drawn by hand.
• A page with content the app cannot edit safely (for example some unusual fonts) is not guessed at. You are asked first, and if you agree the page is saved as a picture, which means its text can no longer be selected.
• The checks cover what they can read in the file. They are not a legal or forensic certificate.

Questions

Does the PDF leave my computer?

No. The file is processed by code running in your browser tab. The only request the app can make to another address is a license check, and only when you type a license key.

Is a black box enough to redact a PDF?

No. A box drawn over text usually leaves the text underneath, where it can be copied or searched. LocalRedactor removes the text first and then paints the box.

Can I redact a scanned PDF?

You can draw boxes over a scanned page and the pixels beneath are overwritten. The app has no OCR, so it cannot search the scan for you.