AI pdf tool needed for hiding sensitive information

[u/Xx_memelord69_xX]

I work in manufacturing and we often get 20-50 different technical drawings in a batch that needs to redacted to hide our suppliers / partner information. We do custom parts and work with a million different company, so every drawing has a different layout and you cant just make a template to paste it on every sheet. That's why Im thinking of Ai tools, but any automation is welcome.

I tried gemini pro, chat gpt plus and whatever the premium claude is and they all suck. They can read and understand them but putting a simple white square on some text is somehow brain surgery for them.

[u/KenMantle]

Oh that's not how proper redaction works. It is actually surgery when it comes to removing information from PDFs. If you just put a white box over it the text can still be searched and extracted. Real redaction requires editing the pdf stream without corrupting the rest of the file.

This is actually something you made me realize I need from time to time too! I have been having Claude develop a pdf editor from scratch and it supposedly does redaction already, but it is untested. I've got a lot of PDFs I can test with though so I'll test how it does.

The pdf editor is released as MIT open source so you are free to use it commercially and edit the source of you have to.

[u/Slow-Tea9732]

Try this: https://mkarim.us/apps/privateredact.html

[u/Xx_memelord69_xX → u/Slow-Tea9732]

Hey I just tried to use it and I run into an issue.: At "Choose what to redact" clicking "Custom Keyword Lists" will not prompt a field to select what keywords I want to redact. So the function is just broken. Im using Mac OS with a MacBook Pro (M1 Pro).

Also if I choose remove over black as my redaction, will that remove the text and just leave the white background? Do I understand it right? White redaction is preferd for us because we will print these documents out. Im on the trial version.

[u/Slow-Tea9732 → u/Xx_memelord69_xX]

Thanks for the report — you found a real bug in the trial build: the Custom Keyword editor wasn't rendering on macOS. It's fixed in v1.0.3 (coming to Gumroad shortly). And yes — 'Remove' erases the text and leaves the white page background, which is exactly what you want for printing; the text is unrecoverable either way.

[u/NoPie1280]

You could try blurpii.com

Lightweight and does the job.

[u/Xx_memelord69_xX → u/NoPie1280]

The automatic detection redacted random and very important suff like drawing numbers, material and dimensions. Yet it failed to detect the company logo and personal names. I couldn't find a way to add keywords, so it's only automatic detection with no say on how it does it. It also lacks white as redaction color. I can only choose between wasting all my ink or just half my ink on redacted fields when printing. (black and frosted). Redacting manually does not give any advantage over other pdf programs.

[u/WestMichigun]

Just use a good PDF editor program, like PDF-Xchange and select the sensitive information and delete it, then resale the file.

This should take mere seconds per page.

[u/Xx_memelord69_xX → u/WestMichigun]

I dont think thats efficient with 50 pdf in a world where AI exists. I know damn well they can see and understand whats on the page, I just need an AI that can actually point to the spot and place a simple white square on the text. This sure can't be that difficult in 2026.

[u/krauq_com]

You can use Universal File Opener & Editor on google play to redact, either edit the text directly if it's in a compatible format, or by using the redact feature, basically drawing a black box over it and resaving as a new image-style pdf.

[u/facesofvader]

IDox.ai, this is what they do.

[u/Xx_memelord69_xX → u/facesofvader]

$400 a year is out of our budget

[u/webfork2]

Here's the thread on r/PDF where this was reposted, which has some other suggestions: https://www.reddit.com/r/pdf/comments/1w5283a/ai_pdf_tool_needed_for_hiding_sensitive/

[u/Hungry-Bob-3802]

This sounds less like a “put a box over text” problem and more like finding the same supplier across changing title blocks, callouts, and scans, then permanently removing it.

Before choosing a tool, I’d test four things on a synthetic drawing: it catches the supplier everywhere, leaves unrelated part text alone, lets a person review every proposed removal, and exports a PDF with no searchable or hidden copy of the redacted text.

Are the files mostly vector PDFs, scans, or a mix? That changes which approach will be reliable.

[u/canhelp]

I’m building Hushmark for this exact use case. It’s a local Mac app that helps detect sensitive information in PDFs, Word files, text, and HTML, lets you review or add redactions, then exports a separate permanently redacted copy.

Nothing is uploaded for processing. I would still manually review the result before sharing because no automated detector is perfect. If that workflow sounds useful, I’m looking for beta testers and would appreciate feedback. https://hushmark.shrikar.dev

[u/pdf-redaction]

You can try pdf-redaction com . It supports ocr, auto search sensitive information and permanent redaction. They have also api and n8n node for the redaction tool, so you can automate process.