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Redaction

Redact a PDF so the hidden text is really removed

Drawing a black rectangle over text doesn't remove it: the words are still in the file and can be copied out. Vault Studio Pro redacts by rebuilding each redacted page as an image with the boxes burned in, so the text underneath no longer exists. It's free and runs in your browser.

Redact a PDFHow the privacy works

Why "covering" text isn't redaction

A PDF page is made of layers: the text, the fonts, vector drawings, images and annotations. Adding a black box with an ordinary PDF editor puts a new shape on top, but the original text is still in the file. Anyone can select it, copy it, search it or open the file in another program and delete the box. Leaks of "redacted" court filings and reports have happened exactly this way.

How redaction works in Vault Studio Pro

When you save a PDF that has redaction boxes, each page with at least one box goes through these steps:

  1. The page is drawn at 200 dots per inch, with your black boxes painted on top.
  2. That drawing becomes a JPEG image.
  3. The original page is replaced by a new page that contains only that image.

The result has no text, fonts or vector shapes left on those pages, so there is nothing under the black boxes to recover. Pages without any redaction are copied across unchanged and keep their selectable text.

How to redact a PDF

  1. Open the app, choose PDF, and open your file.
  2. Choose the redact tool and drag a box over every piece of text or image you want removed.
  3. Check every page, including headers, footers, page numbers and small print.
  4. Save the PDF, then open the saved copy and try to select or search the redacted words to confirm they're gone.

Trade-offs of this method

  • Redacted pages lose their text layer. Text elsewhere on those pages can't be selected or searched any more. Vault Studio Pro's OCR can read the visible text back out for copying, but it doesn't add a searchable text layer to the saved PDF.
  • Those pages become images. They look slightly softer than the original when zoomed in, and the file may get larger.
  • Only what you box is removed. The tool doesn't search for names or numbers for you. Check the document carefully, including repeated details on other pages.
  • Metadata is removed automatically. Saving a redacted PDF also clears its title, author, subject and keywords, resets the producer/creator fields, removes XMP metadata, and removes embedded attachments. Bookmarks aren't page content and aren't touched, so check those separately. Saving with no redaction leaves all of this as-is unless you turn on "Remove metadata before saving" in the toolbar.

Redacting images and screenshots

For a photo or screenshot, use the blackout tool in Image Studio. The exported image is a new flat picture, so the covered area is gone from the file. Prefer solid blackout over pixelation for text.

Why do it in the browser?

The documents that need redacting are usually the ones you least want to upload: contracts, medical records, HR files, bank statements, discovery documents. Online redaction services need a copy of the unredacted file to do the work. Here, the unredacted file stays on your computer. The page's Content-Security-Policy tells the browser to refuse connections to any other site, and you can check the page's own network requests in the built-in Privacy Audit. The security page explains what that covers and what it doesn't.

Redaction is included in the free plan. There is no watermark and no page limit beyond what your device's memory can handle.