How to Redact Documents on iPhone

“Send a copy of your ID, but you can cover the number.” “Attach the bank statement — we only need the header.” Work, landlords, insurers, and border bureaucracies constantly want documents with some of the information — and a phone photo plus a proper redaction tool is the entire workflow.

The Work Redaction Problem

Document redaction has a higher bar than social-photo masking: the recipient is often archiving the file, the data is regulated (card numbers, government IDs), and a sloppy mask is a compliance problem rather than an aesthetic one. Two rules follow: the mask must be opaque (black box, not blur), and the redaction must be flattened into the file — not an annotation layered on top that a PDF reader can delete.

Redact a Document Photo (Step by Step)

1. Photograph the document and open it in Redact PhotoShoot straight-on in good light so text detection has clean input. The photo never leaves your device — which is the point when it's your ID.
2. Run Text detectionEvery field lights up: names, numbers, dates, addresses. The detection preview doubles as a checklist of what the document actually exposes.
3. Black-box the sensitive fieldsUse Black Box for anything regulated or identifying. Manual selection with zoom covers signatures, photos, and barcodes — detection finds text, but barcodes and QR codes identify you too.
4. Export as PDF (or JPG/PNG)Save as PDF for anything headed to an office — it's the format they expect and file. The masks are baked into the pixels either way.

PDF Is Usually the Right Container

Offices archive PDFs, and a single-file PDF travels through email chains and portals without recompression surprises. The redact-then-convert flow has its own guide: censor a photo and save it as PDF.

Why On-Device Matters Most Here

Running an ID or a bank statement through a free web redaction tool inverts the whole exercise — you'd be uploading the document to hide it. On-device processing means the only copy that exists off your phone is the redacted one you chose to send. Strip the metadata too; here's the full routine.