Adobe Redact and Sanitize: visible content and hidden information

Redact targets the visible text and image regions you explicitly mark; applying it actually deletes that content and fills it black. This step is genuine redaction.

Hidden-information removal has its own scope and options, and the current apply-redaction workflow can continue into that step. A tool label alone does not establish complete coverage.

Sanitize (Remove Hidden Information) clears metadata, embedded revisions/comments, stale form-field values, attachments, scripts, and hidden layers — data you can't see but that sits in the file.

Author name, company, creator app, and create/modify timestamps are all in this category, and they tie straight back to your identity.

After removing visible content, check whether unwanted metadata or other hidden information remains.

Sanitize without Redact: the hidden data is cleared, but the body text you wanted to cover is still there.

Follow the product's current marking, applying and hidden-information removal steps, then save a new file and review the actual output.

PrivScrub rebuilds every output page as an image. Unboxed areas retain their visible appearance, but all pages lose searchable and accessible text. It can also clear document Info and XMP. This is not equivalent to all of Acrobat's Sanitize capabilities.

PDFs with annotations, links, forms, attachments, actions or layers are unsupported and stop before export. The generated output is reread, with results limited to their stated check scope.

PDF editing supports basic, unencrypted files up to 50 pages and 25 MiB. Nonempty annotations, internal or external links, forms, attachments, actions and layers are unsupported and stop processing before export. Redaction rebuilds every page as an image, removing searchable and accessible text from all pages. Metadata removal retains supported page content. Output checks reread the actual file, cover only listed items, and do not run OCR. Visually review every output page.