Redact a PDF online
Drop your document here and sign it now. PDF, Word and Excel all work: a .docx or .xlsx is laid out in your browser exactly as it was written, so there is nothing to convert first. Add a signature, a date, a company stamp or a watermark, then download it sealed. Free to start, no account, and the file is never uploaded to open it.
A black rectangle over a name is not redaction, copy the page and the name is still there. This deletes the words from the file, then re-reads the file it produced to prove they are gone. Nothing is uploaded.
Open the Edit & Redact PDF tool →
Deleted, not painted over
The text-drawing operators inside your selection are removed from the content stream. Select-all-and-copy on the finished file returns nothing, because there is nothing left to return.
Checked in the output
After the file is rebuilt it is parsed again and the redacted areas are searched for surviving text. The result is reported to you, because a redaction you cannot verify is a promise rather than a result.
It follows nested content
Text can live inside a Form XObject with its own coordinate system, where a page-level pass never sees it. On a redaction that is a leak, not a cosmetic bug, so the walk follows those down.
How to redact a PDF in 3 steps
- Open your PDF, Drop the file into the editor. It is read in your browser and never uploaded.
- Drag a box over what must go, Switch to Redact and drag across the words. Every line inside the box is deleted from the file, and you choose whether the gap is left blank or covered with a black bar.
- Download and read the report, The rebuilt file is re-parsed and the cleared areas checked. The status line tells you how many text operators were deleted and whether anything survived.
Frequently asked questions
Why is a black box not redaction?
Because it is a shape drawn on top of text that is still in the file. Copy the page into a text editor, or open it with any PDF library, and the words come straight back out. Genuine redaction removes the text itself.
How do I know the text is really gone?
The editor re-opens the file it just produced, extracts the text again, and searches the areas you redacted, then reports what it found. You can repeat the check yourself: open the downloaded file and try to select or search for the words.
Does the layout change when text is removed?
No. Each removed run is replaced by a horizontal jump of exactly the width it occupied, so everything after it on the line stays where it was.
Can I redact a scanned document?
A scan has no text to delete, the words are pixels. Cover the area and flatten it, or OCR it first and be aware the OCR layer is what gets redacted, not the picture underneath.
Is my document uploaded to a server?
No. Redaction happens in your browser tab. For a sensitive document that is the point: there is no copy anywhere else, and no third party to trust with it.
Do I need an account?
Not to redact and preview. Downloading the finished file needs an account, and every plan, the free one included, gives you the whole editor with unlimited files.