How to redact a PDF on Mac: 3 simple methods

Productivity Boost

Jackson Kustec

jackson@macro.com

Published: Thu Oct 12 2023

Most professionals look for a PDF editor with a redaction feature to hide confidential information from other parties involved in a document. When confidentiality comes into play, you need a tool you can trust.

In this article, I’ll explain how to redact a PDF on Mac with three reliable tools.

Let’s get started ⤵️

How to redact a PDF on Mac?

Let’s say you’re about to send a document to a third party for review.

You want the recipient to read and understand the contents of your document, but also hide information like financial projections, proprietary algorithms, and strategic plans.

To protect confidential information while providing a comprehensive overview, you can redact (or hide) specific sections of the PDF.

Here’s how to do it👇

Method 1. Macro

Macro is an all-in-one PDF editor that enables you to read, edit, and redact text from PDFs before sharing them with colleagues or clients.

Here's a video on how to redact a PDF with Macro.

Want a step-by-step guide? We've got you covered. 👇

Step 1: Open PDF with Macro

After signing in with Macro, click ' Open a PDF or DOCX file ' on the app's home screen.

Select the file from which you want to redact text and click ' Open .'

Macro will open the PDF, ready for you to edit, organize, or redact.

Step 2: Redact text with Macro

To get started, click the ‘ Edit’ icon (it looks like pen-and-paper) on the top left menu bar. Alternatively, press Command + 5 on your Mac’s keyboard to open the editor directly.

Macro’s edit menu lets you:

Add text boxes to PDFs
Add shapes
Add page numbers
Sign PDF files
Add images and watermarks
Add headers and footers
Redact text (we will use this feature)
Comment on PDF documents
Bookmark PDF pages
Perform optical character recognition

Click ‘Redact’ in the menu.

Now, select the text you want to redact.

For instance, I was unsure of the last three chapters of my marketing report and chose to delete those pages.

But I also wanted to hide them from the table of contents.

Editing the ToC would take a lot of time, so, instead, I used Macro's redaction tool.

When I clicked on the Redact option, Macro told me to select the area where I wanted to perform a redaction.

When I clicked on the PDF, Macro generated a black rectangle that I could resize to cover the hidden text.

Drag and drop the box over the text and resize it as needed.

You can now copy-paste the black rectangle. Drag, drop, and resize to cover other sections you want to redact.

And you’re done!

Method 2. Redact PDF using Preview

Another way to redact PDFs is by using Mac's built-in Preview option.

To get started, right-click on the PDF > Open With > Preview .

👀 Note: If your default PDF opener is set to Preview, double-click the PDF to open it.

After opening the PDF, click the ‘ Markup Toolbar’ icon for more editing options.

After clicking, you will see another toolbar below the main header with options to:

Add text
Add shapes
E-sign the PDF
Draw anywhere on the PDF
Redact text

And more.

Click the ‘Redact’ icon.

Select the PDF text you want to redact.

👀 Note: Unlike Macro, you can't perform a temporary redaction with the Preview app. After closing the PDF, the app will delete your redacted content.

Method 3. HiPDF

HiPDF is an online PDF editor that lets you redact PDF text in minutes.

Here’s how the process works:

Visit HiPDF’s redact page.
Upload the file you want to redact text from.
Select the text you want to redact.
Click on ‘Apply’ and download the file.

Read and edit documents faster with Macro

By redacting information from PDFs, you can save sensitive or confidential information before making PDF documents public.

All the methods above are free. Tools like Adobe Acrobat Reader also do a great job redacting PDFs, but you must pay for them.

If you want to start redacting PDFs immediately, download the free Macro app and start now.