Redact PDF Free Online — Permanently Remove Sensitive Information
Draw black redaction boxes over any area of your PDF, or search and redact text by keyword across all pages at once. Permanent, visual, browser-based. No signup, no upload — your documents stay on your device.
Redact PDF
Draw boxes over sensitive areas, or search by keyword — then apply permanent black redactions
Drop your PDF here or click to browse
Select one PDF file · No size limit · Files never leave your device
✅ Redactions Applied!
⬛Redact PDF — What This Tool Does and How
Redacting a PDF means permanently covering sensitive information with a solid black box so that the underlying content cannot be read, selected, or recovered from the file. This is different from highlighting text in black or changing the font colour to black — both of those methods leave the original text in the PDF data, readable by anyone who copies the text or views the raw file structure.
This tool works in two modes. In draw mode, your PDF is rendered page by page on a canvas and you click-and-drag to draw red selection boxes over any area you want to redact — names, addresses, ID numbers, phone numbers, signatures, account details, or any other content. In search mode, you type a keyword and the tool uses PDF.js to scan all pages for matching text, automatically marking every occurrence for redaction. When you click Apply Redactions, pdf-lib draws solid black filled rectangles directly onto the page content of each affected page and saves a new PDF.
The redaction boxes in the output are permanent visual black rectangles embedded in the page. They cannot be moved or removed by opening the PDF in a viewer.
Draw Mode
Click-drag to mark any area on any page
Search Mode
Find keyword on all pages at once
Permanent
Black boxes embedded in page content
Undo Before Apply
Remove any box before finalising
100% Private
Never leaves your browser
Always Free
No limits, no account
📋How to Redact a PDF
Upload Your PDF
Drop your PDF onto the upload zone. The first page renders immediately as an interactive canvas.
Choose Your Mode
Use Draw mode to manually mark areas, or Switch to Search mode to find and mark all instances of a keyword across all pages at once.
Mark Redactions
Drag to draw boxes in Draw mode, or type a term and click Find & Mark in Search mode. Navigate pages to mark multiple pages. Click X on any box to remove it before applying.
Apply & Download
Click Apply Redactions. pdf-lib draws permanent black boxes on every marked area across all pages and the redacted PDF downloads instantly.
❓Frequently Asked Questions
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Free, permanent, private. Draw black boxes or search by keyword — sensitive information removed in seconds.
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