How to black out text in a PDF
- Open the PDF above. It stays on your device.
- Make sure Draw boxes is on, then drag over each part you want blacked out. On a phone, switch to Draw boxes first so dragging does not scroll.
- For something that appears many times, such as a name, type it into Find and redact instead and every occurrence is boxed.
- Tap Redact and check, wait for the check to say 0 recoverable, and download.
Covering text is not blacking it out
The trap is that a black shape looks exactly like a redaction. Courts, schools and companies have published documents where a black bar hid a name on screen, but selecting the bar and pasting into a text editor revealed it. The words were never removed; they were only painted over.
You can test any PDF yourself: drag-select across the black area, copy, and paste into a plain text editor. If anything appears, the black-out failed. This tool runs that test for you when you open a file, and again on the file it creates.
What happens to the page
Pages with a box are rendered at 200 dpi (or 150 or 300 if you choose), the boxes are painted into the pixels, and the page is replaced by that one image. The old page content (text, fonts, drawings and images) does not go into the new file. Pages without boxes are copied over untouched, so the rest of the document stays sharp and searchable.
Blacking out a whole document for sharing? Tick Turn every page into an image to rebuild every page, which also removes any text you have not noticed, such as white text or text hidden off the page edge.
Need the text gone without leaving black bars on the rest of the file? Read remove text from a PDF permanently.
Questions people ask
Can I black out text with a highlighter or rectangle tool?
Only if you want it to look hidden. A black highlight, rectangle or comment box sits on top of the text, and the text stays in the file. Anyone can copy it out or find it with search. To actually black out text, the text itself has to be removed, which is what this tool does.
Can I black out part of a line?
Yes. Search for just the part you want, such as an account number, or drag a box over exactly that part. Only the area under the box turns black; the rest of the line stays readable.
Can I black out a signature, photo or logo?
Yes. Drag a box over it. The pixels under the box are painted black in the rebuilt page, so images are removed the same way as text.
Does the blacked-out area print black?
Yes. It is black pixels in the page image, so it prints, screenshots and exports black in every viewer.
Can someone undo it?
No. There is no layer to remove and no original text kept underneath. The page is a new image with the black areas already in it, and the tool checks the exported file to confirm the blacked-out text cannot be found.