ToolSmyths
ToolSmyths
Drawing a black rectangle in a PDF editor hides text from your eyes, not from the file. The words sit underneath, and anyone can select and copy them straight back out. This removes them for good.
● Nothing is uploaded. The document is opened and rewritten on your own machine.
or click to browse
the original file on your disk is never modified
Any page you mark gets flattened into an image before the black is applied. The text objects underneath are not covered up — they stop existing in the saved file. That is the only way to be certain, and it is easy to verify: search the saved PDF and the words are simply not there.
The trade-off is honest: flattened pages are no longer selectable or searchable, because they are pictures of pages. Pages you do not mark are copied through untouched and keep their text. Restoring a searchable text layer over redacted pages is coming as a paid extra — it needs to read the page back with OCR, which is a heavy job.
Drag to mark. Draw a box over anything that should go. Marks snap outwards to cover whole words, so a box that clips half a name still removes all of it.
Only marked pages change. Pages you never touch are copied through exactly as they were, text and all. Nothing else is degraded.
Check it yourself. Open the saved file and search for a word you removed. It won't be found, because it isn't there.