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✓ 100% Free🔒 Files Stay On Device✦ GDPR Compliant

Redact PDF Permanently Remove Sensitive Content

Draw over text or images to permanently destroy the data — not just cover it. True redaction. Free, no upload, GDPR-compliant.

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Drop your PDF here

or click to browse — max 200 MB

0 / 1 filesMax 200MB per file

How to Redact a PDF Online — Free

Redacting a PDF permanently removes sensitive content so it cannot be recovered. Doclair's browser-based tool requires no software and no account.

1

Upload your PDF by clicking Drop your PDF here or dragging it into the upload area.

2

Draw redaction boxes over sensitive areas by clicking and dragging on the page preview. Use the text search to find and mark all instances of specific words or phrases.

3

Click Apply Redactions Permanently to destroy the content and download your redacted PDF.

True redaction vs drawing a black box — the difference

Drawing a black rectangle over text in a standard PDF editor only hides it visually. The underlying text data remains in the file and can be exposed by anyone who removes the annotation, copies the text, or uses a screen reader. True redaction works differently: it re-renders each page as a raster image and draws solid black pixels over the sensitive area. The original vector text is gone — there is no annotation layer to remove, no hidden characters, no recoverable data.

GDPR compliance and PDF redaction

Under GDPR and other privacy regulations, simply covering data is not sufficient — the data must be irreversibly removed. Doclair's true redaction approach satisfies this requirement. Because all processing happens in your browser, no personal data is transmitted to any server, making it safe to use on regulated documents such as medical records, legal contracts, and financial statements.

Redact PDF on iPhone and Android

Doclair works in Safari on iPhone and iPad, and Chrome on Android. The touch-based drawing interface lets you draw redaction boxes by tapping and dragging directly on the page preview. No app download required.

Frequently Asked Questions

Yes. Doclair re-renders each page as an image and draws black pixels over the redacted areas. The original text data is completely destroyed and cannot be recovered by any software.
A black box drawn over PDF text only hides it visually — the text data remains in the file and can be revealed by copying, searching, or removing the annotation. True redaction removes the data entirely by replacing the page with a rasterised image.
Yes. Draw a redaction box over any area — text, images, signatures, faces, anything visible on the page. The entire region is permanently blacked out.
Never. Tesseract and pdf-lib run entirely in your browser. Your document never leaves your device.
No metadata, hidden layers, or recoverable data remains in the redacted areas. The output PDF is a clean image-based document with no original content.
Use the text search feature: type the sensitive word or phrase, click Find All Instances, then Mark All for Redaction. Boxes are added across all pages. You can then review each page before applying.