- Drag it in, choose it, or paste it. It is read here in the tab and never uploaded.
- The settings column holds 1 control for this tool. The defaults suit most files.
- “Apply redactions” works on your device, then Original and Result sit side by side with a download.
About Redact PDF
Redact PDF removes what you mark from the document itself. Each marked page is rebuilt as an image with the marked areas painted out, so nothing is left underneath to recover.
Most redaction is a black rectangle drawn over the text, and most black rectangles can be dragged aside, selected through, or searched behind — the words are still there, under the paint. That is the failure this tool is built to avoid.
A page you mark is rendered to a picture at print resolution with the marked areas painted in, and that picture replaces the page. What was under the mark has no text, no vector art and no image data left to recover, because the page it lived on no longer exists. The pages you did not mark are untouched and stay as they were.
The cost is honest and worth knowing before you run it: a redacted page is a picture, so nothing on it can be selected, searched or copied any more, and it will usually be larger than the page it replaced. Mark only the pages that need it. If searchable text matters afterwards, run the result through Make searchable — though that reads the words from the picture, so check it.