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Best PDF redaction software for Mac in 2026: 6 options compared

2026-10-28 · best pdf redaction software for mac

Updated October 2026.

Here's the short answer. For an occasional job, Preview's built-in redaction tool is free and already on your Mac. If your firm, your clients or the other side all work in Adobe, or you're on Windows too, Acrobat Pro is the safe default. If redaction is the main job, you want proof the text is gone, and you'd rather pay once, that's what we built Basalt for. PDF Expert, Foxit PDF Editor and Xodo PDF Studio are capable all-round editors that redact as well.

We make Basalt, so weigh what we say about it accordingly. We've tried to be fair to everyone else. Every price and feature below comes from each company's own website, checked in October 2026, and prices are US list prices. Where a company doesn't say something, we tell you that rather than guess.

What to look for in PDF redaction software

Every app on this list has a redact button, and the buttons look alike. What matters is what happens to the file underneath. Five questions sort them out:

• Does it remove the content or cover it? The words under the black box have to leave the file. If you can still select them, copy them or find them with search, nothing was redacted. How to redact a PDF on a Mac explains the difference.
• Can it find every occurrence? A name that appears forty times needs forty marks. Search and pattern matching (phone numbers, account numbers) save you from missing one.
• What about hidden data? Text also lives in metadata, comments, form fields, attachments, hidden layers and earlier versions saved inside the file. Hidden data in PDFs lists every place it hides.
• Can you check the result? Some tools check their own output. With the rest, you check it yourself before you send it. How to verify a PDF redaction shows how.
• Where does the file go, and who else needs the tool? A desktop app keeps the document on your Mac. A team that's half on Windows needs something that runs there too.

For the longer version of these criteria, see PDF redaction software for Mac: what to look for.

The 6 best PDF redaction apps for Mac

1. Preview, built into macOS: free, fine for occasional jobs

Preview comes with every Mac. Apple's Preview guide lists a Redaction Selection tool in the Markup toolbar. In Apple's words, you select text "to remove it from view," you can change a redaction while you're editing, and it becomes permanent once you close the document.

Good at: It costs nothing, there's nothing to install, and it's quick for a line or two in a short document.

Falls short: Apple's guide notes that table of contents entries linking to redacted text aren't removed. It doesn't say what happens to metadata, comments, form fields or attachments, and it doesn't describe a way to find and redact every match of a word at once. Apple's guide doesn't describe any check of the result, so check the saved file yourself before it leaves your Mac.

Price: Free with macOS.

2. Adobe Acrobat Pro: the default choice for mixed Mac and Windows teams

Acrobat Pro is Adobe's full PDF editor. Adobe says it can "permanently redact sensitive data from a PDF."

Good at: Its redaction tool can search for a word, several words, or patterns such as phone numbers and email addresses, and mark every hit. Adobe's help pages say that when you apply redactions you can switch on "Sanitize and remove hidden information," and sanitizing covers metadata, comments, hidden layers and data left over from earlier saves. It runs on Mac and Windows, with online and mobile access on the subscription, and it's a complete PDF editor besides.

Falls short: Redaction is in Acrobat Pro, not Acrobat Standard. Adobe stopped selling perpetual versions after Acrobat 2020. Its non-subscription option, Acrobat Pro 2024, is a one-time purchase that gives three years of desktop use with security updates but no new features, and Adobe's plans page doesn't list its price. Adobe notes that pattern search works on text, not images, and that nothing is removed until you apply and save.

Price: $19.99 a month on an annual plan billed monthly, $29.99 month to month, or $239.88 a year prepaid. There's a 7-day free trial.

3. Basalt: redaction that proves itself, paid for once

Basalt is our app: a native Mac PDF toolkit with eighteen tools, and redaction is the one we built the engine around.

Good at:

• It removes text from the file glyph by glyph and re-writes the surviving words in place. Image pixels under a mark are destroyed and re-encoded.
• Every export strips metadata, XMP, attachments, hidden layers and stale thumbnails, and writes the file as one clean generation with no earlier version inside.
• Before it saves anything, a verifier re-opens the file it just wrote with a separate parser and checks that every marked item is gone. If it can't prove that, it doesn't write the file.
• Each job can produce a signed certificate of redaction that anyone can check with shasum and openssl, no Basalt required. The same file with the same marks gives a byte-identical result, so someone else can re-run your redaction and confirm it.
• Search covers the whole document, and an on-device scan suggests things to redact, such as Social Security numbers, card numbers, IBANs, email addresses, phone numbers and ID numbers from many countries, for you to review one by one. Marks carry reason codes, and you can export a privilege log as CSV or XLSX.
• The part of Basalt that opens your documents runs as a separate process with no network entitlement. You can confirm that on your own copy with codesign.
• OCR, Bates numbering, merge, split, compress, compare and an Inspector that shows what another tool left behind in a "redacted" file are all in the same window.

Falls short: It's Mac only, macOS 13 Ventura or later, with no Windows, iPhone or iPad version. It isn't a full editor, so you can't rewrite a sentence in an existing paragraph, and its signatures are drawn, typed or imported images rather than certificate-based digital signatures. When a page uses an image or text it can't rewrite exactly, it refuses to export instead of guessing. The fix is to rasterize that page at 300 DPI and mark it again, which turns the page into an image. On some forms, a mark that touches a page-wide shaded background removes that shading from the page. Nothing extra is disclosed, but the page won't look exactly like the original. There are no automatic updates yet: new versions come from our site or Homebrew. And the trial is 24 hours, so have a real test document ready before you start it.

Pick something else if you need to edit text, you share one tool with Windows users, you need certificate-based digital signatures, or your counterparties insist on Acrobat.

Price: $29 once for up to three Macs, with updates included and no subscription. The whole app is free for 24 hours with no account and no card. System requirements are on our support page.

4. PDF Expert: a Mac, iPad and iPhone editor that also redacts

PDF Expert from Readdle is a general PDF editor first, with redaction as one tool among many.

Good at: In Readdle's own guide you choose Edit, then Redact, and pick Blackout (a black box) or Erase (blank space). Find and Redact handles every match at once with Blackout All or Erase All. Readdle says both options "permanently delete the selected content." One yearly subscription covers Mac, iPad and iPhone, which suits people who review documents on an iPad.

Falls short: Readdle's redaction guide doesn't mention metadata or other hidden data, so check the document's properties yourself. It isn't available on Windows, and it needs macOS Monterey or later. The lifetime license is Mac only, and Readdle says future big updates with new tools may cost extra. Readdle's pages don't say plainly whether Redact needs Premium, but premium features are free for 7 days, so test redaction inside that window.

Price: About $79.99 a year for Mac, iPad and iPhone, or about $139.99 once for a Mac-only lifetime license (Readdle's US figures from February 2026; its pricing page shows your local currency). Readdle offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.

5. Foxit PDF Editor: a full editor on nearly every platform

Foxit PDF Editor is a full PDF editor that runs on desktop, web and mobile.

Good at: Foxit's Mac manual describes Protect, then Mark for Redaction, for text, images or whole pages. Search & Redact finds exact words or phrases, saved redaction profiles, or patterns such as phone and credit card numbers, and you tick the hits you want. Applying is permanent. A separate Sanitize Document command removes metadata and other hidden data in one step, or you can pick items with Remove Hidden Information. PDF Editor+ adds Smart Redact, an AI plug-in that Foxit says is English only. It runs on Windows, macOS and the web, and PDF Editor+ adds iOS and Android.

Falls short: Hidden-data removal is its own command, separate from applying redactions, so it's a step you have to remember. The plans are the hardest to read on this list: Foxit's comparison table lists redaction under PDF Editor+, and doesn't spell it out for the cheaper plan or for the one-time license, so confirm in the trial before you pay. The one-time PDF Editor 14 excludes Smart Redact and the cloud features.

Price: PDF Editor+ is $159.99 per user per year. Subscriptions start at $10.99 per user per month. PDF Editor 14 is $209.99 once per user, for Windows or macOS. The trial is 14 days with no card.

6. Xodo PDF Studio: Mac, Windows and Linux, with a perpetual license

Xodo PDF Studio, formerly Qoppa PDF Studio, is the only option here that also runs on Linux.

Good at: Qoppa's PDF Studio guide says applying redactions "removes any text, image, annotations, form fields or drawings" under the marked area. Since PDF Studio 2019, a search can mark every hit for redaction at once. A Sanitize Document tool cleans out hidden data and metadata. Xodo sells a perpetual license as well as subscriptions.

Falls short: Marking, applying and sanitizing are three separate steps, and Qoppa's own help warns that marking alone removes nothing. The full trial needs a credit card, and the free demo watermarks the files you save. Xodo's product page doesn't say how many devices or how many years of upgrades the perpetual license includes.

Price: $240 once per user, $19.99 a month, or $9.99 a month on a yearly plan.

Comparison at a glance

Which one to pick

• You redact a few times a year and nothing is high stakes: Preview, then check the saved file.
• Your firm, your clients or the other side work in Adobe, or you're on Windows too: Acrobat Pro.
• Redaction is the job, the documents must stay on your Mac, you want proof, and you'd rather pay once: Basalt.
• You want an everyday editor across Mac, iPad and iPhone that can also redact: PDF Expert.
• You're a mixed Windows and Mac team that wants a full editor for less than Acrobat Pro: Foxit PDF Editor.
• You need Linux, or a perpetual license that works on every desktop: Xodo PDF Studio.

Whatever you choose, test it first

Run this on a document you can share before you trust any tool with one you can't.

1. Redact a word in the middle of a paragraph, then save to a new file.
2. Open the new file, select the paragraph, copy it and paste it into a plain text editor. The word should be gone and the words around it intact.
3. Search the whole file for the word you removed. Nothing should come up.
4. Look at the document's properties (in Preview, Tools then Show Inspector), its comments, its form fields and its attachments. Each can hold the same text.

If any step finds the word, the redaction failed, whichever app made it.