“Silence is also an answer.”
Redact PDF Online
Permanently remove sensitive text by searching for the exact terms you specify, blacking them out, and then flattening the page so the hidden text can never be selected, copied, or recovered.
- No sign-up, no watermark
- Files encrypted and auto-deleted
- No installation — runs right in your browser
- Fast processing on desktop and mobile
Read our full guide: How to Redact Sensitive Information in a PDF Permanently →
How to use Redact PDF online
- 1
Upload your files
Drag and drop or click to select your file(s). Uploads go directly to encrypted cloud storage over HTTPS. (PDF)
- 2
Run the tool: Redact PDF
Processing happens instantly in the cloud — no software to install, works on Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android.
- 3
Download the result
Get your processed file via a secure temporary link. All files are deleted automatically about a day after upload.
Frequently asked questions
Is this real redaction, or just a black rectangle?
Real redaction. Drawing a black box over text is the classic failure — the words stay in the file and can be copied straight out from underneath. Here, matches are covered and then every page is rasterized, so the original text objects no longer exist in the output. There is nothing left underneath to extract.
How do I specify what to remove?
As a comma-separated list of exact terms — names, phone numbers, account numbers, company names. Every occurrence of each term across the whole document is found and covered.
What's the trade-off of flattening?
The output pages become images, so the redacted document is no longer searchable or copy-pasteable and the file may be larger. That's the necessary price of the text genuinely being gone. Keep your unredacted original if you still need a searchable copy.
What if I don't know every term to redact?
Use Smart Redact, which reads the document with AI and proposes the names, emails, phone numbers, and ID numbers it finds for you to confirm — then applies this same redaction engine. It's the better starting point on a long document where missing one instance matters.
How can I check the redaction actually worked?
Open the finished file and try to select or search for one of the terms you removed. Because the pages have been flattened, nothing selects and the search finds nothing — there is no text layer left to hide anything in. That check takes seconds and is worth doing before sending anything sensitive.