Automatically black out every occurrence of a word or phrase — permanently.
Find and permanently black out sensitive text in a PDF. Enter a word or phrase and every occurrence is redacted; with flatten-to-image on, the hidden text is rasterised so it can’t be selected, copied or recovered. Files are processed securely and never stored.
Upload your file using the tool above.
Adjust any settings to your preference.
Click the process button and wait for results.
Download your output using the download button.
Yes — the page is rasterised, so the underlying characters no longer exist in the file. This is the crucial difference from drawing a black rectangle in a PDF editor, where the text survives untouched beneath the shape and can be recovered by anyone who selects and copies it.
Because the obvious approach is the broken one. Adding a black box in Acrobat or Preview covers the text visually without removing it, so copying underneath, or extracting the text layer, reveals everything. Courts, agencies and newspapers have all published documents redacted this way.
The pages become images, so the document is no longer searchable or selectable and the file is usually larger. That is the price of genuine redaction. If you need the rest of the document searchable, run OCR afterwards — recognising only what remains visible, not what was removed.
Yes, Redact PDF (Black Out Text) is completely free. No signup, no account, and no watermark on outputs. A Pro tier is available for 100 AI ops/day and larger file sizes.
Redact PDF (Black Out Text) uploads your file over an encrypted connection to our own processing server, converts it, and returns the result. The file is deleted immediately after processing and is never used for anything else. It is not sent to any third party, and we keep no copies.
Drop a PDF to redact text
Automatically black out every occurrence of a word or phrase
Drop your file into the stage to begin.
Real redaction: With “flatten to image” on (recommended), the redacted PDF is rasterised so the hidden text is truly gone — it can’t be selected, copied or recovered underneath the black boxes.
One term at a time: Redact a single word or phrase per run — run it again for other terms.
Privacy: Your PDF is sent over an encrypted connection, redacted in memory, and deleted immediately after — never stored.