How to redact a PDF
Upload your PDF.
Enable Redact mode.
Draw redaction boxes over sensitive areas.
Review the boxes.
Download the redacted PDF.
Why flattened redaction matters
A black rectangle placed over text is not always safe because underlying text may still exist in the PDF.
CrabPDF's redacted export renders pages and burns redaction boxes into the final output.
The result is image-based and no longer text-selectable, which is intentional for true redaction.
The tradeoff is that the redacted PDF may be larger and less editable.
Private by design
CrabPDF is designed to run locally in your browser. The editing flow does not require uploading your PDF to a backend server. This makes it useful for quick local edits, OCR corrections, search and replace, and redaction experiments.
CrabPDF is experimental. Always verify important documents after editing or redaction.