What Is Document Redaction?
Document redaction is the process of permanently removing or obscuring sensitive information from a file before sharing it. Common targets include personally identifiable information (PII) such as Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, phone numbers, and email addresses, as well as case-specific text like client names, patient identifiers, or privileged legal content. Proper redaction destroys the original data — not just visually hides it — so the information cannot be recovered by copying text from behind a black bar or inspecting the underlying file structure.
2redact is a free, client-side redaction tool that handles this work entirely in your browser. It supports PDFs, images (JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, WebP), CSV spreadsheets, and DOCX documents, with built-in PII detection and custom pattern matching.
How Does 2redact Work?
2redact runs a different pipeline for each file type, but all of them execute 100% in your browser. Here is the full workflow:
- Drop or select a file — PDFs, images, CSVs, and DOCX documents are all supported.
- Configure redaction targets — enable the built-in PII patterns you want (SSN, credit card, phone, email, passport) and add any custom text strings or regex patterns.
- Process locally — the appropriate engine loads in a Web Worker: Tesseract.js for OCR on PDFs and images, Papa Parse for CSV cells, or Mammoth for DOCX trees. Nothing is uploaded.
- Review the preview — see each redacted page or cell before you download the result.
- Download and wipe — save the redacted output as a file, then either click Start Over or let the 10-minute auto-wipe clear everything from browser memory.
What Types of PII Does 2redact Detect Automatically?
2redact ships with six built-in patterns that cover the most common personally identifiable information categories:
- Social Security Numbers (SSNs) — US format (###-##-####).
- Credit card numbers — 13-19 digit sequences matching major issuers.
- Phone numbers — US, Canadian, and common international formats.
- Email addresses — any standard email pattern.
- IPv4 addresses — dotted-decimal notation.
- Canadian passport numbers — the standard 2-letter + 6-digit format.
On top of those, you can add unlimited custom targets: names, case numbers, internal identifiers, specific phrases, or regular expressions. The custom patterns are applied the same way as built-in ones, so every match is permanently obscured.
Which File Formats Does 2redact Support?
2redact supports four broad categories of documents. PDFs are processed page-by-page through PDF.js, then OCR-scanned and converted to redacted PNG images — this guarantees that text cannot be extracted from behind the redaction bars. Image files (JPG, PNG, GIF, BMP, WebP) are OCR-scanned directly on a canvas and the matched pixel regions are painted black. CSV files are parsed with Papa Parse and matching cell values are replaced with the literal string [REDACTED]. DOCX files are converted to HTML via Mammoth, with matched text strings replaced in the resulting document tree.
Why Use a Client-Side Redactor Instead of an Online Service?
Most online redaction services upload your document to a remote server, run the redaction there, and store the result in a cloud bucket. That model exposes sensitive files to the server operator, their logs, their employees, and any downstream retention policies. For regulated industries — legal, medical, financial, government — this is often a compliance non-starter.
2redact never uploads anything. Every byte of your document stays inside your browser tab. When you close the tab or let the 10-minute auto-wipe run, every trace of the file is gone. This is the strongest privacy guarantee any redaction tool can offer: a file that was never transmitted cannot be leaked, logged, or subpoenaed.
Who Is 2redact For?
- Legal professionals redacting privileged content, case identifiers, or client names before filing or discovery.
- Healthcare administrators removing PHI from records before sharing with auditors or external specialists.
- Financial analysts sanitizing bank statements, transaction logs, or tax documents before review.
- Journalists and researchers protecting source identities in leaked documents and FOIA responses.
- HR teams scrubbing employee records before vendor audits or internal investigations.
- Developers and security engineers redacting logs, config files, and screenshots before filing bug reports.
Explore the 2suite Ecosystem
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