Drawing a black box over text in a PDF is NOT the same as redacting it. True redaction destroys the underlying text permanently. This guide explains the difference and shows you exactly how to create a genuinely redacted PDF that protects sensitive data.
Adding a black rectangle as an annotation or overlay on top of text. The original text remains underneath — anyone can remove the overlay in Acrobat or inspect the file to reveal it.
Pages are rasterized to canvas pixels. Redaction color is burned directly into those pixels. PDF is rebuilt from the resulting images. Original text is permanently and irrecoverably destroyed.
⚠️ Important: Many free PDF "redaction" tools online only draw colored rectangles as overlays — they do NOT truly destroy the underlying text. GS DocSeva uses canvas-burn redaction, making recovery impossible.
Visit gsdocseva.com/redact-pdf.html. The tool loads with a page viewer and control panel.
Click "Choose PDF File" or drag your PDF in. The first page renders in the viewer panel at high resolution for accurate box placement.
Click and drag on the page viewer to draw a redaction box over sensitive content. Release to place it — a black rectangle appears. Draw as many boxes as needed on this page. Use the color picker to choose black, navy, dark red, or dark green.
Click "Next →" to move to the next page and draw boxes there. Each page's redaction boxes are tracked independently. The right panel lists all boxes across all pages.
Before downloading, click "Undo" next to any box in the list panel to remove it. This is your last chance — redactions are permanent after download.
Click "Apply Redactions & Download". Every page is re-rendered as a canvas image with boxes burned in, then rebuilt into a new PDF using pdf-lib. Downloads with -redacted.pdf filename.
🔎 Accuracy Tip: Zoom your browser to 150% before drawing redaction boxes for finer control over small text like ID numbers and phone numbers. The canvas scales with your browser zoom level.
Unlike cloud redaction services that upload your confidential document (containing the very sensitive information you're trying to protect) to foreign servers for processing, GS DocSeva processes everything locally using pdf.js and pdf-lib inside your browser's memory. The redacted PDF is streamed directly to your downloads folder — no server ever sees your document or its content.
Canvas-burn permanent redaction, multi-page, undo before download — zero uploads.
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