Redacting sensitive info.

Apple's Preview application (in Big Sur) has a redact annotation feature for PDF content. This is not present in Catalina, and if. you want to redact (properly remove) selected content in Catalina or earlier, you will need to purchase a PDF editor with that capability from the Mac App Store (PDFpenPro, PDF Expert, etc.).

The Big Sur redaction begins with opening a copy of your original PDF and then selecting the markup toolbar. There is a new Redaction item on that toolbar:

and when you select it, the following warning will appear:

Now drag the insertion beam across the content that you want redacted [removed] from the PDF. The removed content will appear as the following in the PDF, and a search for the redacted word (e.g. crazy) will not find it in the saved PDF. This black box will appear wherever your redaction is been applied. It is not a black graphic overlaying text, because the text is actually removed from the PDF.

I am trying to use the redact tool in Preview 11.0. If I redact a section, save and leave the pdf, when I reopen it, there are extra redact blocks over the page (i.e. where I did not draw).

Is there a bug in the current release or am I doing something wrong?

There is a problem with redaction with Preview 11.0 (1018.2) on Apple Silicon macOS 11.2. It does not appear to affect Preview on Intel macOS 11.2 Macs. I have filed a bug report with Apple. This problem did not exist in macOS 11.1 on either platform architecture.

I can duplicate a problem on my M1 mini running macOS 11.2, where one can select multiple text selections on the first page of a PDF for redaction, and then move to another page. On the new page, any attempt to select text for redaction causes Preview to jump back to the first page with all text on the first page selected for redaction. This is broken, and one should fully undo all redaction before exiting the Preview, as once redactions are made and the document exited, they can not be undone.

You are welcome.

Upon installation of macOS Big Sur 11.2.1, the issue encountered with Preview Redaction in macOS 11.2 on M1 Macs has been fixed, and now works as expected. No version change for Preview.

Thanks for the heads up. I just tried it on a MBP 16 with 11.2.1 and it does appear to be working.

Still a problem in 11.2.3. Redaction blocks over places I didn't touch.

I just redacted random text across a 33 page PDF without the slightest issue of redaction occurring on the text that I did not purposely select for redaction. -- macOS 11.2.3.

Good for you. But it still doesn't work right on mine. So there is still a problem somewhere.