# De-identify a PDF — remove names, emails & IDs, no upload

> Find and replace or hide sensitive text — names, emails, IDs — in a PDF, with hard burn-in by default. Auto-detect or draw regions. Runs in your browser, no upload.

Find and replace or hide sensitive text — names, emails, IDs — across a PDF, with hard burn-in as the default so removed content is destroyed. Auto-detect common patterns or draw regions on scans, all on your device.

De-identifying is redaction with search: instead of hunting for every occurrence of a name or ID by eye, you enter it once (or enable pattern detectors) and the tool finds and removes it across the document. Hard burn-in ensures the data is genuinely gone, not just covered.

Blend mode can re-type a replacement in the original style so edits are unobtrusive, and an experimental in-place mode rewrites real text on standard-font PDFs. For manual region redaction, use Redact; to strip file metadata too, use Clean.

## How to

1. **Open the PDF.** Drop the document you need to de-identify.
2. **Target the data.** Enter terms to hide or swap, or turn on detectors for emails, phones, SSNs, and card numbers.
3. **Save.** Burn in the changes (default) and download the cleaned PDF.

## FAQ

### Can it detect sensitive data automatically?

Yes. Detectors can flag emails, phone numbers, SSNs, and card numbers, and you can also enter specific names or IDs to hide or replace.

### Is the removal permanent?

Hard burn-in is the default, rasterizing matched or drawn regions so the underlying pixels are destroyed; a soft overlay mode is available for quick passes.

### Does it work on scans?

Yes. On image-only PDFs you can draw manual regions, the same patch workflow as Redact.


## Related tools

- [Redact](https://www.safepaper.app/docs/redact)
- [Clean](https://www.safepaper.app/docs/clean)
- [Compress](https://www.safepaper.app/docs/compress)
- [OCR](https://www.safepaper.app/docs/ocr)

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