All tests run on an 8-year-old MacBook Air.

All results from shipping 7 Mac apps as a solo developer. No sponsored opinion.

Real PDF redaction is harder than it looks. The naive approach — draw a black rectangle over text — doesn't actually remove the text from the file.

Here's what proper redaction requires.

The problem with naive redaction

A PDF with a black rectangle drawn over sensitive text still contains that text in the file structure. Anyone with a PDF editor can remove the rectangle and read the original content.

This has caused real security incidents.…