Redact PDF
Black out sensitive text and images so they are truly destroyed — not just covered with a box.
Redact PDF online, free and private
Redacting a PDF means permanently removing sensitive content — names, account numbers, addresses, signatures — so it cannot be recovered by anyone who receives the file. This is fundamentally different from drawing a black rectangle over text: a cover-up box still leaves the original text in the file, where it can be copied out with select-all, exposed by removing the box, or found by search. Real-world data leaks have happened exactly this way.
PDFToolz redacts properly. You draw boxes over the content to remove, and every marked page is re-rendered into a flat image with the boxes burned in — the text and graphics underneath are destroyed, not hidden. And because the whole process runs in your browser, the unredacted original is never uploaded anywhere.
How to redact pdf in your browser
- 1
Add your PDF
Click ‘Select PDF file’ or drop the document onto the page. Every page renders as a thumbnail so you can move between them.
- 2
Draw redaction boxes
Pick a page, then drag over anything that must go — you can draw as many boxes as you need across any number of pages. Clicked the wrong spot? Click a box to remove it, or clear them all and start over.
- 3
Redact and download
Press ‘Redact PDF’. Pages containing boxes are rasterized with the redactions burned into the pixels, untouched pages are copied through unchanged, and the safe-to-share PDF downloads immediately.
Why use PDFToolz for this
Content is destroyed, not covered
Redacted pages are rebuilt as images, so the text and graphics under each box no longer exist in the file. Select-all, copy-paste, text search, and PDF editors will find nothing — because there is nothing left to find.
Untouched pages stay pristine
Only pages that contain a redaction box are rasterized. Every other page is copied through unchanged, keeping its selectable text and original quality.
The original never leaves your device
With most online redaction tools you upload the unredacted document — the most sensitive version of the file — to someone else's server. Here the entire process runs in your browser, so nobody but you ever has the original.
Free with no limits
Redact as many documents as you need — no account, no watermark, no page limits, no ‘premium redaction’ tier.