How to Redact a PDF Free Without Adobe Acrobat
Permanently black out sensitive information in PDFs without Adobe Acrobat. Proper redaction removes content — not just covers it.
Adobe Acrobat Pro has a redaction feature but costs £17.99/month. FixMyPDF's redaction tool permanently removes selected content from PDFs for free — no account, no software.
What Proper Redaction Does
Proper redaction removes the underlying text and image data from the PDF — it does not just paint a black box over it. If you add a black rectangle over text as an annotation, the original text is still in the PDF and can be extracted by copying the text layer. True redaction deletes the content from the file.
How to Redact Without Adobe
Go to fixmypdf.in/tools/redact. Upload the PDF. Draw a redaction box over each area to redact. Review the marked areas. Apply redaction — the content under the boxes is permanently removed. Download the redacted PDF.
Verifying Redaction Worked
After downloading the redacted PDF, open it and try to select or copy text in the redacted area. In a properly redacted PDF, no text should be selectable in that region.
What to Redact
Names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses. National insurance or social security numbers. Financial account numbers. Medical record numbers. Any personally identifiable information (PII) before sharing a document externally.
Privacy Note
FixMyPDF redaction runs entirely in your browser. The original content and the redacted areas are never sent to any server. Only you see the document being processed.
Try Redact PDF Now — Free
Browser-based, private, and instant. No account or software required.
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