RealRedact
It actually works.
A Mac app that removes sensitive bits from PDFs — really removes them, not just covers them — before you send the file to ChatGPT, Claude, or any AI tool.
Not sure which? Apple menu → About This Mac. If it says Apple M1/M2/M3/M4, pick Apple Silicon. If it says Intel, pick Intel. macOS 11 Big Sur or later.
Free beta · Code-signed & notarised by Apple · Zero network calls · Found a bug?
Why this matters
When you draw a black box over text in Preview — or in most other PDF tools — the text underneath is still in the file. Anyone with a free command-line utility can pull it back out in under ten seconds.
It’s the same failure mode that exposed Paul Manafort’s court filing in January 2019 — lawyers redacted a PDF, the court released it, and within minutes anyone could copy the “redacted” text straight out of the file. The black box is a picture sitting on top; the text underneath is still text.
Real Redact removes the text from the file. There is nothing left underneath the bar.
How to use it
- Open the app and drop in a PDF.
- In the box on the right, type the words you want hidden — one per line.
- Save. You get a new PDF; the original is untouched.
It also auto-catches emails, phone numbers, credit cards, SSNs and tax IDs, and dates.
Verifiably offline
Real Redact makes zero network calls. No telemetry, no auto-update, no font CDN, no error reporting service.
Don’t take our word for it — the point is that you can check. Run the app with Little Snitch in “block all” mode, exercise every feature, and confirm zero outbound connections. If anything ever lights up, the central claim is dead. We’d like to know about it.
This is a beta
You’re looking at an early build. It’s code-signed and notarised by Apple, so it installs without a warning, but it’s not feature-complete and it has rough edges. Windows is on the roadmap.
If something breaks — a crash, the wrong thing redacted, the app stalling on a PDF — drop us a line with what happened and (if you can share it) the PDF you were trying to redact. Sample files are gold for reproducing problems.