Redact PDFs on Mac

How to redact a PDF in PDFBirdie

1. Open the PDF and choose Tools > Redact.
2. Drag a box over anything you want gone. It turns red.
3. To catch every match, click Find.Choose Words or Phrases, or a kind of information like Email addresses, Phone numbers or Social Security numbers. PDFBirdie draws a box around every match in the document.
4. Click the X next to any area you want to keep.
5. Click Apply.
6. Read the report, then save.If the check passes, you'll see "Nothing left under the boxes." If anything under a box can still be read, the report shows it so you can fix it before you share the file.

What PDFBirdie removes

When you apply a redaction, PDFBirdie removes everything under each box:

• Text. The characters are taken out of the page, so they can't be copied, searched or pulled out with another tool.
• Images. The pixels under the box are erased from the picture.
• Shapes and drawings under the box.
• Comments and form fields that overlap the box. Form fields are cleared first so their values don't linger.

The rest of the page stays as it was, so it stays sharp and searchable. If a page's content can't be edited in place, PDFBirdie saves that page as an image with the boxes burned in, and the report tells you which pages that happened to.

What PDFBirdie checks

After removing the content, PDFBirdie reads the finished file again:

• Under every box. It looks for any text still there. If it finds some, the report shows exactly what and where.
• Everywhere else. If a word you redacted also shows up somewhere you didn't redact, like a name in a footer, the report lists the pages so you can catch it.

Redacting a document also deletes PDFBirdie's saved earlier versions of it, so an old copy can't bring the text back. And every time you save, PDFBirdie removes the author name and other identifying metadata. Remove PDF metadata

How to redact a PDF in Preview

Preview, the PDF app that comes with your Mac, has a basic Redact tool:

1. Open the PDF in Preview and show the Markup toolbar.
2. Click the Redact button.
3. Drag over the text or image you want removed. A black box appears, and Preview warns you that the text will be removed.
4. Save the file. Preview takes the text out when you save, not before.

Preview's Redact tool works well for a few quick boxes. It doesn't search for every match of a word or a kind of information, and it doesn't give you a report on the finished file. For a long document, or anything with personal information spread across many pages, PDFBirdie's find and check steps save time and catch mistakes.

Don't use a black shape or a black highlight. Drawing a black rectangle with Preview's shape tool, or highlighting in black, only covers the text. The words are still in the file, and anyone can copy them out. Use a real Redact tool.

How to check if a PDF is really redacted

Try these on any redacted PDF before you send it, whatever app made it:

1. Search for it. Press Command-F and search for a word you redacted. If it shows up, it's still there.
2. Copy and paste. Select the area around a black box, copy, and paste into a text file. If the hidden words appear, the redaction failed.
3. Look at the metadata. Open the file in Preview and choose Tools > Show Inspector. Check the author, title and keywords for names you meant to remove.
4. Check the other pages. Names often turn up again in headers, footers, page labels and comments.

PDFBirdie does the first two checks for you and shows the results in its report.

Redact many PDFs at once

PDFBirdie adds a Redact PDF action to the Shortcuts app. It removes every match of the words and kinds of information you choose, checks the result, and refuses to make a file if anything is still readable. You can run it from Finder as a Quick Action on a whole folder of files.

Redact a PDF without Adobe

You don't need Acrobat or a subscription to redact properly. PDFBirdie is free, redaction included. There's no account and nothing to upload.