You want to share a screenshot, but there is an account number in the corner. Or a photo where a stranger’s face, a license plate, or a home address is clearly readable. Posting it as-is hands that detail to everyone who sees it. Redacting the image hides those parts before it leaves your device.
TL;DR: Open the image redactor, drop in your file, and drag a box over each private detail. Choose blur, pixelation or a black bar, then download. Everything happens in your browser and the hidden pixels cannot be recovered from the file.
What “redact” really means
To redact is to permanently hide part of a document or image so the sensitive detail cannot be read. The important word is permanently. Slapping a blurry shape on top with a design app or a CSS filter looks redacted, but the original pixels are often still sitting in the file underneath. Anyone with the raw image can sometimes lift the overlay and read what you thought you had covered.
A real redaction bakes the change into the pixels. The tool redraws the whole image with the private areas painted over, then exports that flattened version. There is no original layer left to recover.
When you should redact
- Screenshots with names, emails, account numbers, order IDs or chat history.
- Photos where a face, tattoo or ID badge identifies someone who did not agree to be posted.
- Documents with a signature, address, date of birth or reference number.
- Anything with a license plate you are about to put online.
Blur, pixelate, or black bar
You get three ways to hide a region, and the right one depends on what is underneath.
- Blur softens the area so shapes stay but detail goes. Good for faces and backgrounds where you still want the photo to read naturally.
- Pixelate breaks the area into coarse blocks. It reads clearly as “hidden on purpose” and holds up better than a light blur on text.
- Black bar is a solid fill. Use it for anything that absolutely must not be guessed, like a card number or a password.
For text and numbers, lean toward pixelation at a high strength or a black bar. A gentle blur over a short number can sometimes be reconstructed, so it is not the safe choice there.
Step by step
- Open the image redactor and drop in your photo or screenshot.
- Drag a box over the first thing you want to hide. Add as many boxes as you need.
- Pick a style (blur, pixelate or black bar) and set the strength. The whole image updates live so you can see the result.
- Check every box covers the full detail, including any part that spills past the edge.
- Download as PNG for a sharp result, or JPG for a smaller file.
A quiet bonus: your location data goes too
Photos from a phone carry hidden EXIF data, which often includes the exact GPS coordinates where the shot was taken. Sharing the raw file can share your home or your route without you realising. Because the redactor redraws the image on export, that camera and location data is dropped from the download. You hide the private pixels and lose the private metadata in the same step.
Nothing is uploaded while you do any of this. The image stays on your device from start to finish, which is the whole point when the reason you are redacting is privacy.
