PDF Redactor: Blur and Black Out PDFs Offline

Redact PDF files offline: black out or blur emails, phone and card numbers, or anything you select. Text is truly removed.

Redact PDF files right in Chrome, without uploading them anywhere. PDF Redactor finds emails, phone numbers, card numbers, Social Security numbers and bank account numbers for you, and lets you black out, blur or white-out anything else on the page. The text under every box is permanently deleted from the file, not just covered by a shape, and each new copy is checked before you share it. It works offline, needs no account, and your documents never leave your computer. TRY EVERY PRO FEATURE FREE ON YOUR FIRST 3 PDFs Hide all, Local AI and label boxes are unlocked on your first 3 PDFs. No account, no card, no sign-up. A PDF only counts when you download the finished copy, so opening files to look around costs nothing. After that, every free feature keeps working on as many documents as you like. HOW IT WORKS 1. Open a file: drag it onto the redactor, click the toolbar icon while viewing a PDF in Chrome, or right-click a PDF link and choose "Redact this PDF". 2. Review the suggestions: everything it finds appears as a dashed box. Hide each one with a click or the H key, skip what should stay visible, or use Hide all (Pro). 3. Mark anything else: drag a box over any area, select text, or search for a word or name. 4. Download: you get a new, cleaned copy. Your original file is never changed. WHO USES IT • Lawyers, paralegals and legal assistants preparing court filings, discovery productions, exhibits, contracts and NDAs • HR and recruiting teams removing personal details from employee records, references and résumés for blind hiring • Healthcare, dental and clinic staff removing patient details from medical letters, lab results and insurance claims • Accountants, bookkeepers and finance teams sharing invoices, payroll reports and tax documents • Privacy, compliance and records officers answering data subject access requests (GDPR DSARs) and FOIA or public records requests • Real estate agents, landlords and property managers handling rental and mortgage applications • Journalists, researchers and academics protecting sources and anonymizing study material • Teachers and school staff sharing student documents • IT, security and support teams sharing logs, tickets and reports that contain customer data, IP addresses or MAC addresses • Freelancers and small businesses sending portfolio samples without client names • Anyone sending a bank statement, pay stub or ID document to a landlord, lender, employer or online service COMMON USE CASES • Black out account numbers on a bank statement before a rental, mortgage or loan application • Hide your Social Security number and salary on a pay stub or tax return when you send proof of income • Remove client names and prices from a contract before sharing it as a template or sample • Censor names, addresses and phone numbers in a police report, court record or legal exhibit • Anonymize a document before uploading it to an AI chatbot, an online converter or a signing service • Cover a signature, photo, logo or QR code, including on scanned pages • Strip the author name, comments and hidden metadata before you publish a document online WHAT'S FREE (on every PDF, forever) • Automatic detection of emails, phone numbers (US and international), payment card numbers (verified with the card checksum), US Social Security numbers and IBANs, plus IP and MAC addresses when you turn them on • Find words: type a name, case number or phrase and every match in the document is marked • Draw box: drag over any area to remove text, photos, signatures, logos or handwriting • Select text: drag across words, lines or whole paragraphs • Hide suggestions one at a time with a click or the H key, or tick a row to hide every copy of that text • Skip what should stay visible, and add words to a "Never suggest" list (like your own company name) • Black box, blurred or white-out look, chosen per item; hover any box to peek underneath • Remove hidden info: author, title and other document properties, XMP metadata, comments, attachments, scripts and bookmarks • Undo and redo, keyboard shortcuts, page thumbnails, light and dark theme • No watermark, and no limit on how many files you clean up PRO FEATURES (in-app purchase, free on your first 3 PDFs) • Hide all: accept every suggestion in one click, or a whole group at once, such as every email address in a 40-page file • Local AI: finds names, street addresses, account numbers, passwords and dates that no fixed pattern can catch. The AI model (OpenAI Privacy Filter) runs on your own computer, never in the cloud. It needs a one-time download of about 810 MB and a browser and graphics card with WebGPU, and it works best on English text. Review what it suggests: it can miss things or flag text that isn't private. • Label boxes: show [NAME], [EMAIL] or your own text where something was removed, handy for legal exhibits and anonymized research Free and Pro files go through exactly the same removal and checks. Pro saves time; it never changes how safe the result is. REAL REDACTION, NOT JUST A BLACK RECTANGLE Many "redacted" PDFs leak because a black shape is drawn over text that is still in the file, ready to be copied, searched or extracted. PDF Redactor removes the content itself: • Text under a box is deleted from the file, not hidden behind a shape • Images under a box are painted over in the image's own pixels • Form field values and comments are turned into page content first, so they can be removed too • Earlier versions saved inside the file are dropped, so a removed word can't be recovered from an old revision • After saving, the new file is reopened and checked to make sure none of the removed text can be found. A page that fails the check is rebuilt as a flat image with the boxes burned in, then checked again • The blurred look is drawn from scrambled fake text, never from your real text, so it can't be un-blurred PRIVATE BY DESIGN • Works offline: your file is opened, edited and saved on your computer and is never uploaded • No account and no sign-up. If you buy Pro, the payment page asks for your email so you can restore your purchase • No ads, no analytics, no tracking • No access to your websites at install. Chrome asks only when you open a PDF from a link on another site, and only for that site • The only network requests are the optional Local AI model download (from Hugging Face) and the Pro license check (with ExtensionPay). Neither one ever includes your documents or their text FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS How do I redact a PDF for free? Open it in PDF Redactor, click each dashed suggestion (or press H), drag a box over anything else and download. Hiding items one by one, Find words, Draw box, Select text and the black, blurred and white-out looks are free on every file. Can someone copy or search the text under the black box? No. The text is deleted from the new file, not covered. Before you share it, the new file is checked to make sure none of the removed words can be found. Are my files uploaded to a server? No. Everything happens in your browser, on your computer, and it keeps working with no internet connection. What counts as one of my 3 free Pro PDFs? A file counts the first time you download its cleaned copy. Opening a file to look at it costs nothing, and downloading the same open file again doesn't count twice. A file that opens with Pro features keeps them until you close it. What happens after the 3 free PDFs? You keep everything in the free list above, on as many files as you like, with the same removal and checks. Hide all, Local AI and label boxes need Pro. Click See Pro in the extension for plans; a purchase can be restored on another computer with your email. How do I remove metadata from a PDF? Leave "Remove hidden info" on (it's on by default). The author, title, XMP metadata, comments, attachments, scripts and bookmarks are taken out of the new file. Can I use it on scanned PDFs? Yes, with Draw box: drag over anything you want gone and it is painted out of the page image. Automatic finding needs PDFs with real text; text recognition (OCR) for scans is planned. Can I open password-protected PDFs? Yes. Type the password when asked. The cleaned copy is saved without a password. Does it work with files saved on my computer? Yes. Drag the file onto the redactor page. To use the toolbar icon on a file opened from your computer instead, Chrome needs "Allow access to file URLs" turned on for the extension, and PDF Redactor shows you how. Does it find everything automatically? No tool can promise that. Suggestions help you catch the common items quickly; always look through each page before you download, and use Find words and Draw box for anything specific to your document. Does it work in other languages? Find words, Draw box, Select text and the email, card, IBAN and international phone finders work in any language. The Social Security number finder is US-only, and Local AI works best on English. Made by Smart Build Labs.