Permanently redact a PDF with PDF Redact
This opens a letter with a confidential project name and searches for it, with the higher 200 DPI setting preselected. It shows the whole path: mark, preview the burned-in pages, export, and the report that re-opens the new file and checks it.
- Open the PDF and mark what must be removed, by search or by drawing boxes.
- Open Review: the preview paints the boxes on the page image exactly as the export will.
- Choose a resolution on the Export tab (150 DPI is the default; 200 is sharper for small print).
- Create the redacted PDF and read the checks: page images only, no text layer, boxes solid black.
- Download, then open the result and read every page yourself.
What to know
Permanent means the information is not in the output file at all. Here that is achieved by construction: the new file is written from scratch with one image per page, so there is no text object to hide, no font, no annotation, no form, no attachment, no metadata and no leftover older revision. The source file is never copied byte for byte.
The verification step does not trust that claim. It scans the bytes of the file it just produced and requires every object to be one of the few it writes; it re-opens the file with PDF.js and requires an empty text layer and the same page sizes; and it re-renders each page and requires the pixels inside every box to be black. A failed check stops the download button from being the main action.
What it cannot know is whether you marked everything. A name inside a photo, a number the pattern did not match, or a face is yours to judge. The final step is always to read the file you are about to share.
Updated · Cosmovex
Questions
What exactly is removed from the file?
Everything of the original: the text under the boxes and all other text, vector drawings, annotations and comments, form fields, attachments, scripts, bookmarks, document properties and earlier saved versions. Only a picture of each page remains.
What do I lose when the output is made of images?
Text in the whole output can no longer be selected, searched or copied, links and form fields stop working, and the file is usually larger. That is the cost of making sure the covered content is really gone, and the tool says so before you export.
How do I know the black boxes really removed the text?
After export the tool re-opens the file it just wrote and checks it: it contains only page images, there is no text layer to extract, and the pixels inside every box are black. You should still open the result and read every page; the checks cannot tell whether you covered everything sensitive.
Is this a legal or compliance certificate?
No. It is a tool that does a specific technical thing and checks its own output. Whether that is enough for a rule, a court or a regulator is your decision; review the file before you share it.
The free plan covers everything on this page. PDF Redact Pro ($29, paid once) is described on the PDF Redact page.
