Redaction Tool
About the Redaction Tool
The Redaction Tool permanently blacks out a rectangular area of a PDF page, visually covering sensitive content like a Social Security number, an account number, a name, or any other information that shouldn't be visible in the version of the document you're sharing. Unlike a highlight (which is semi-transparent and lets content show through), a redaction is drawn as a fully opaque black rectangle at 100% opacity, completely covering whatever sits beneath it.
You specify the page number, and the X and Y position along with the width and height of the rectangle you want blacked out, and the tool draws a solid black box directly onto that region of the page. Because the rectangle is drawn at full opacity, no part of the underlying content shows through — visually, the area functions as a proper redaction the moment it's applied.
This is essential for sharing documents that contain a mix of information you need to disclose and information you don't — a contract with a redacted payment amount, a form with a blacked-out ID number before sending it to a third party, a report with a covered-up name to protect someone's privacy, or a legal filing with sensitive details removed before public release. In every one of these cases, simply covering the content with a colored box protects the reader from seeing the sensitive detail directly in the viewer.
It's worth understanding an important technical distinction: this tool visually covers the content by drawing over it, which is effective for how the page displays and prints in a standard PDF viewer, but the original text underneath may still exist in the PDF's internal text layer and could potentially be recovered by someone who copies the text, uses find-and-search, or extracts the raw content with the right tools. For situations demanding forensic-grade redaction — where the underlying data must be truly destroyed, not just visually covered — you should also remove the original text layer or use a professional redaction tool built specifically to strip the covered content at the data level, not just the visual level.
Before finalizing a redaction, it's worth zooming in on the resulting PDF page to confirm your black box fully covers the sensitive content with a small margin on all sides, since sizing the rectangle exactly to the visible text can sometimes leave a thin sliver of content visible at the very edge, especially if the original text extends slightly further than it visually appears to. For documents with several separate pieces of information that need redacting on the same page, it's more reliable to add each redaction as its own separate pass with the tool rather than trying to estimate one large combined rectangle that covers multiple scattered areas, since a more targeted approach reduces the risk of either missing content or accidentally covering something that should remain visible.
Because the redacted PDF is generated fresh in your browser rather than uploaded to a server for processing, the sensitive content you're covering is never transmitted anywhere during the redaction process itself — the only version of the document that includes the unredacted content is the original file already sitting on your own device. This local-only processing is particularly important for redaction specifically, since the entire point of the exercise is limiting exposure of sensitive information. For adding a correction or note alongside a redaction rather than just covering content, the PDF Editor tool lets you add typed text at a specific position.
Step-by-Step Instructions
- Upload your PDF into the drop zone.
- Enter the page number containing the content you need to redact.
- Set the X and Y position of the top-left corner of the area to cover.
- Set the width and height of the rectangle to fully cover the sensitive content.
- Click "Redact Area" to apply the black-out.
- Your browser downloads the result automatically as redacted.pdf.
Benefits & Use Cases
- Visually removes sensitive content before sharing a document
- Fully opaque coverage, unlike a semi-transparent highlight
- Precise, coordinate-based control over the covered area
- Useful for IDs, financial details, names, and confidential clauses
- Fast, one-click application per redacted area
- Runs entirely offline, keeping sensitive content private during editing