How to redact a PDF
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Open your PDFLoad the document you want to sanitise. Each page renders in the browser so you can read the actual text and spot the Aadhaar, PAN, phone, or account numbers you need to hide.
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Drag black boxes over sensitive partsClick and drag a rectangle over any text or area. Resize it to cover the full number or signature. Add as many boxes as you need across any pages, including partial masks that hide only the middle digits of an account number.
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Apply the redactionsThe tool draws each opaque black rectangle directly into the page content and flattens it, so the covered content is no longer selectable, searchable, or copyable in the output.
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Download the safe copyExport the redacted PDF. Your original stays untouched on your device, and the new file is the one you share, upload, or print.
Redact PDF in detail
Unlike highlighting text a black colour in a word processor, real redaction has to remove the underlying content, not just cover it. This tool renders each page with pdf.js so you can see exactly what you are boxing, then uses pdf-lib to draw a fully opaque rectangle at that coordinate and flatten the page so the shape becomes part of the page content stream rather than a movable annotation. The mask cannot be dragged away, and the covered pixels are no longer selectable or copyable in the exported file. A common real scenario in India: you need to upload a rent agreement, cancelled cheque, or bank passbook to a portal like a GST registration, a tender site, or a college admission form, but you must hide the full account number and your Aadhaar digits first. You draw boxes over those exact numbers, apply, and download a version safe to share. Because the whole process runs on your device, the original file with the visible numbers never leaves your browser, which matters when the thing you are hiding is precisely the data you don't want sitting on someone's server.
After you black out the sensitive numbers, you can add a password to the redacted copy so only the intended recipient can open it. If the same file also needs your signature, sign the document after redacting so the masks are already baked in before you approve it. For a scanned image-only PDF you may want to make scanned text selectable first so you can clearly see which numbers to cover. If only one page contains sensitive data, split out only the pages you plan to share so there is less to redact and send.
When people use it
Mask Aadhaar and PAN before public sharingHide your 12-digit Aadhaar or 10-character PAN on scanned KYC documents before uploading them to a portal or emailing them to a landlord, employer, or coaching institute.
Black out bank account and IFSC on a chequeCover the account number on a cancelled cheque or passbook copy when a vendor or tender site (India) only needs to verify the name and bank, not your full account details.
Sanitise contracts and offer lettersRemove salary figures, client names, or personal addresses from an agreement or offer letter before sharing it as a reference or sample.
Hide phone numbers and addresses in resumesRedact contact details from a CV or ID proof when posting it to a job board or forwarding it through a group where you don't want your number visible.
Step-by-step guides
About Redact PDF
Redaction is the careful act of making part of a document unreadable. A lawyer redacts a witness name before sharing a court filing publicly. A reporter redacts a source's contact info before publishing a leaked memo. An HR team redacts salary information before circulating a policy document.
Redact PDF lets you draw black boxes over text or images you want hidden, and saves a new PDF where the redacted content is permanently removed, not just covered. The difference matters: a cover-up that's just a black rectangle on top of the original text leaves the original text readable by anyone with a PDF editor. Real redaction destroys the data underneath.
How to mark redactions
Click and drag on the page preview to draw a black rectangle over the content you want hidden. Each rectangle is its own redaction mark. You can add as many as you need across as many pages as you need.
Rectangles can be moved and resized after you've drawn them, in case you missed by a few pixels. Click a box you drew to select it, then drag it to move it or drag its corner to resize it.
Once you've marked everything, click Redact & download. Every page that has a redaction is redrawn as an image with the black boxes burnt in, so the text and pictures under them are gone from the file; pages without redactions are copied unchanged.
Why "permanent" matters
There have been famous redaction fails where a lawyer or government office published a "redacted" document that turned out to have the original text intact underneath the black rectangles. A reader with a PDF editor could simply delete the rectangles to read the supposedly-hidden content.
This tool prevents that by actually removing the underlying data from the page stream when you apply the redactions. The redacted PDF doesn't contain the original words anywhere in its file structure. Even with a hex editor or a PDF parser, the original content is unrecoverable.
Common redaction situations
Sharing court filings or legal exhibits publicly with witness names, addresses, or other personally identifying information removed.
Posting a contract template online while hiding the actual parties and dollar values.
Distributing a research draft with a footnote that names a source you want kept confidential.
Publishing a policy document with internal email addresses or phone extensions redacted.
Releasing a copy of a sensitive document to comply with a records request while keeping protected information out of the released version.
Things to double-check
Scan every page before applying. A single missed instance of the redacted term elsewhere in the document defeats the purpose. Tools that promise to find and redact every occurrence of a word automatically are helpful for first passes but they miss aliases, abbreviations, and indirect references. A human eye is the final check.
Watch for content in headers, footers, and image labels. Redactions over the body of a page don't automatically catch text in the running header.
If the document has metadata (author name, edit history, embedded files), the redaction also strips identifying metadata. But verify by opening the saved PDF's properties to make sure.