Is this a true redaction, or just a black box on top?

It's a true redaction. Any page you draw a box on is flattened to an image with the box burned in, so the underlying text and objects are discarded — they can't be recovered by copy-pasting or extracting text. Pages you don't mark are left untouched.

Will the whole document lose its selectable text?

No — only pages that have at least one redaction box on them are flattened. Any page with no boxes keeps its original, selectable text.

Yes, completely free, and the file is processed in your browser rather than uploaded to a server.

EasyPDFSign

Redact PDF — Free

Permanently black out sensitive text and graphics in a PDF. Draw boxes over what needs to be hidden — it's removed for good, not just covered.

Permanently black out sensitive text and graphics in a PDF. Draw boxes over what needs to be hidden — it's removed for good, not just covered. JavaScript is required for the interactive tool.

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