PDF Redact & Metadata Remover — Offline, No Upload

Black boxes don’t delete text. See what’s still inside a PDF — metadata, hidden text, attachments — and remove it. Always free.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 　What's new in 1.1.0 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ▼ Japanese interface The extension now follows your browser language, and you can switch it from the start screen. ▼ Fixes ◆ Annotations were saved slightly out of place This affected PDFs whose page origin is not at (0,0). If you saved annotated files with 1.0.0, it is worth checking where they landed. ◆ A redaction dialog could survive opening a different file The confirmation dialog stayed on screen, and applying it would black out the wrong document. ▼ New features ◆ Inspector Accessibility check / damaged-page detection / embedded JavaScript / attachments / fonts / links ◆ Page tools Watermark / page numbers / stamps / blank-page detection / crop / N-up / booklet imposition / overlay / resize / page labels ◆ Other Grayscale conversion / image extraction / bookmark editing / form filling / file repair / bulk annotation removal ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 　A black box is not redaction ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Draw a black rectangle over a name in a PDF and the name is still there — selectable, searchable, sitting in the file. People have leaked contracts, court filings and personnel records this way. This extension deletes the text itself. And before you send a file, it shows you what else is hiding inside it. Everything runs in your browser. No upload, no account, no server. The good free alternatives ask you to install desktop software or run a Docker container. This one is a browser extension. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 　Redact — properly ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ▼ The text is actually removed Drag a box, or select the text itself. The underlying text is deleted from the PDF's internal data. It is not a black rectangle drawn on top. ▼ When images or vector artwork are underneath If the area covers non-text drawing, the page is rasterised instead, so nothing is left behind. ▼ You confirm before anything happens A confirmation step shows you exactly which characters will be removed. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 　Inspect — see what is still in the file ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Open a PDF and the extension tells you how many items are hiding in it. Inspecting and removing are both free. 　◆ Document properties 　　Author, title, producing software, timestamps 　◆ XMP metadata 　　A separate channel from document properties. Tools that clean one often miss the other 　◆ Annotation text 　　Comments and author names, including annotations flagged as hidden 　◆ Form field values and XFA 　◆ Structure tag alternate text 　　Read by screen readers and extraction tools 　◆ Page thumbnails 　　These can still show the page as it was before editing 　◆ Application-private data 　　Left behind by the software that created the file 　◆ Embedded file attachments and bookmarks You choose what to remove. Attachments and bookmarks are kept by default, because removing them changes the document itself. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 　Everything else it does ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ▼ View and navigate Continuous scroll / thumbnails / zoom / fit-to-width / fit-to-page / full-text search Japanese, Chinese and Korean documents work out of the box — character maps and fonts are bundled, nothing is fetched from a CDN. ▼ Annotate Highlight / freehand pen / text boxes / rectangles / ellipses / lines / arrows Select, move, resize and edit anything you have placed. Undo and redo are supported. ▼ Sign Draw your signature, or type it in one of four handwriting styles. Place it anywhere, at any size. ▼ Organise pages Merge / split / extract / reorder / rotate / delete Drag pages in the sidebar to reorder them. ▼ OCR Read scanned pages and add an invisible text layer, so the page becomes searchable, selectable and redactable. English and Japanese. The OCR engine is bundled. Your scans are not sent anywhere. ▼ Compress and export Re-encode embedded images to reduce file size. Export pages as images, or the text as a .txt file. ▼ Save, download and print Always free. No watermark, no account, no page limit. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 　Why one permission matters ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Open chrome://extensions and look at what this extension is allowed to do. It asks for "storage" and nothing else — used to remember your interface settings and any signature you choose to keep. ▼ What it does not request 　✕ host_permissions 　　It cannot read or change any website 　✕ content_scripts 　　It injects no code into any page 　✕ tabs / activeTab / webRequest / scripting / downloads ▼ You can check for yourself That is not a promise. It is in the manifest, and Chrome enforces it. It also works with your network switched off. Turn off Wi-Fi and open a PDF — everything still works, because nothing was ever being sent. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 　What it does not do ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 　✕ Conversion to Word, Excel or PowerPoint 　　Those need a document engine that cannot run in a browser 　✕ Digital certificate signing or timestamping 　✕ Cloud sync, sharing or accounts 　△ Encrypted PDFs 　　They can be viewed, but editing requires a copy with the protection removed 　△ Redacting text only removes the text 　　If an image under the area shows the same information, choose the rasterise option instead — the extension tells you when this applies ▼ Disclaimer Redaction and sanitisation are aids to detection and processing, not a guarantee of compliance. Verify results using your organisation's own procedures, and keep a copy of the original file. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 　Privacy ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ No data is collected. No analytics, no telemetry, no crash reporting, no third-party SDK. 　Privacy policy 　https://sparklabtech.jp/privacy 　Questions 　support@sparklabtech.jp