Redact an image: black out what you can't share

To redact an image, open it above and drag a solid box over everything that has to stay private, then download the PNG. The box replaces the pixels underneath, so unlike a blur or pixelation there's nothing left to recover, and the download is a single flat image with no layers to peel off.

How to redact a screenshot

1. Open, drop or paste the image. It stays in this browser tab.
2. The Cover tool is selected, in black. Drag a box over each thing to hide, a few pixels larger than the text itself.
3. Check the whole image at full size, including the edges: address bars, tab titles and notification banners are easy to miss.
4. Download the PNG. Share that file, not the original.

Why a solid box, not a blur

Blur and pixelation average neighbouring pixels. Averaging hides a face well, but short text in a known font can sometimes be matched back, and there are public tools that do it. A solid box has nothing to average. Use blur or pixelation when you only need something to be unreadable at a glance, like a name in a chat, and a box for anything that would hurt if it leaked.

Redactions that fail, and how to avoid them

• A box on top of live text. In a PDF, a Word file or a slide, a black rectangle is a separate object sitting over text that's still there. In 2019, a court filing by Paul Manafort's lawyers exposed its redacted passages exactly this way: the black bars could be copied past. A flattened image like the PNG from this page has no text underneath to copy.
• A see-through marker. A highlighter or a pen stroke at partial opacity looks black on a bright screen, but raising the exposure in any photo app can bring the text back. The Cover box here is fully opaque.
• Codes that carry data. QR codes and barcodes encode what they point to. The barcode on a boarding pass holds your name and booking reference, which is enough to manage someone's trip on many airline sites. Cover the whole code, not just the printed text beside it.
• The same detail somewhere else. An email you covered in the page body can still be in the account menu, the browser tab title or an autofill dropdown. Search the image for every place a secret appears.
• Other copies of the original. The unredacted screenshot can still be on your desktop, in your photo library, in a synced folder or in clipboard history. Delete it once you've shared the redacted one.

What to redact

Black, white or a matching colour?

Black is the convention, and it tells the reader something was removed on purpose, which is the honest choice for documents and evidence. A white box on a white page reads as missing content. If you're cleaning up a product screenshot on a white interface and want the removal to blend in, use the white swatch, but only for cosmetic edits, not for anything where the reader should know information was withheld.

Nothing extra rides along in the file

The download is a new PNG drawn by your browser from what you see, so it carries none of the original file's metadata, such as the location or camera details a photo can hold. The image is never uploaded either: opening, redacting and exporting all happen on your device, which matters most when the thing you're hiding is the reason you're being careful.

Redacting a PDF

This tool works on images. For a PDF with selectable text, use a PDF editor's dedicated redaction feature, which deletes the text under the bar, rather than drawing a rectangle on top. For a single page you only need to share as a picture, take a screenshot of it, redact it here, and send the image.

Frequently asked questions