Drawing black boxes in Acrobat or Preview leaves Social Security Numbers, banking codes, and form entries hidden inside raw document streams. RedactLocal surgically eradicates character bytecodes completely offline on your computer.
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine ~/Downloads/RedactLocal*.dmg
In high-profile cases like the Paul Manafort trial, attorneys drew black boxes on top of text. Anyone who selected the text and copied it to the clipboard recovered the secrets instantly.
Only adds a decorative black vector rectangle on layer 5. The raw character bytes, interactive form fields (/V), and XFA XML datasets still exist in the file.
Decompresses streams, surgically excises Tj/TJ character operators, burns out underlying raster image pixels, and unlinks form dictionaries with zero residual bytes.
Regular expressions alone can't catch arbitrary patient names or clinical diagnoses, and black-box models hallucinate. RedactLocal fuses 3 layers of protection with complete user discretion.
15 canonical statutory formats: PAN Cards, Aadhaar, GSTIN, TAN, SSN, Passports, IFSC wire codes, Credit Cards, and bank accounts.
100% DeterministicRuns entirely in WebAssembly memory to extract unstructured patient/doctor names, street addresses, and clinical medical terms without cloud calls.
Zero Cloud TransmissionClick to draw custom boxes, or uncheck any auto-detected field to keep public law firm addresses or phone numbers visible without forced over-redaction.
Human-in-the-LoopPages are rendered and flattened to high-resolution images; original vector text, AcroForms, and metadata streams are physically excluded from the output.
We believe confidential privacy is a fundamental human right. Every feature of RedactLocal—desktop apps, multi-file batch queues, visual flattening, and local audit logs—is 100% free and open-source under the MIT license.
Full-featured air-gapped redaction without subscriptions, accounts, or page limits.
connect-src 'none')
RedactLocal is an independent labor of love. We keep it completely free so sensitive data is never ransomed behind paywalls.
"If RedactLocal saved your law firm or accounting practice hours of tedious manual blackout work, or prevented a catastrophic PII leak, consider supporting ongoing development with a coffee."
| Feature / Requirement | RedactLocal Desktop | Adobe Acrobat Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing Model | 100% Free & Open Source (MIT) · Optional Coffee Tip | $239.88 / year recurring subscription |
| Cloud & Telemetry Risk | 0 bytes sent. Air-gapped verified. | Syncs documents to Adobe Document Cloud |
| Redaction Eradication | True bytecode stream operator excision | Complex sanitize wizard (leaves XFA/metadata if unconfigured) |
| Court Verification Receipt | Official Cryptographic Receipt (SHA-256) | None. No independent oracle audit. |
| Statutory Compliance | FRCP 5.2, HIPAA Safe Harbor, IRS § 7216 | Requires enterprise BAA configuration |
100% offline, native desktop utility. Air-gapped security with zero cloud telemetry.
Because RedactLocal is an open-source, air-gapped utility built with zero tracking and zero cloud telemetry, macOS Sequoia & Sonoma display a standard security notice on first download: "Apple could not verify RedactLocal is free of malware".
curl -fsSL https://mohdashraf010897.github.io/redactlocal/install.sh | bash
xattr -cr /Applications/RedactLocal.app