Download PII Blackout
Looking for a blackout PDF free download that keeps files offline? PII Blackout is a desktop app with a free trial—automated PII detection, permanent blackout, and batch processing on Windows and macOS. No uploading bank statements to random websites.
New to blackout workflows? Read how to black out information on a PDF or free PDF redaction options compared.
Prefer not to use the Store? Download the Windows installer directly (.exe)
How to use PII Blackout (in-app workflow)
The workflow is designed for offline redaction. PDFs can be text-based or scanned/image-based.
- Select the sensitive data types you want to detect. If you have specific terms to remove, enter them in the custom keywords input.
- Click Add PDF Files to add documents. PII Blackout supports both text PDFs and image/scanned PDFs.
- Click Step1: Analyze & Preview to scan all documents for sensitive content. After Step1 finishes and before Step2, you can keep or deselect auto-detected items and manually draw additional blackout regions with your mouse.
- Click Step2: Apply Redaction to apply black redaction across all pages that contain sensitive content. To remove metadata thoroughly, pages with sensitive content are rendered to high-resolution images before the final blackout is applied. Use Settings → Output Dpi to control how sharp those exports are (see below).
- In the same folder as your input documents, you can review the redacted files and the redaction report. The report shows the redacted terms on each page.
Output quality (Settings → Output Dpi)
In the menu bar, open Settings → Output Dpi and choose 150, 200, 300, 400, or 600. This controls the resolution used when Step2 renders redacted pages.
Higher DPI produces sharper, clearer PDF output—especially for scanned or image-based documents—but exported files are larger and Step2 takes longer. Lower DPI is faster and keeps file size down when you are processing large batches and do not need maximum visual fidelity. 300 is a practical default for most workflows; raise it for court exhibits or fine print, or lower it for quick internal drafts.