Hide what shouldn't be shared
Most pictures we share show more than we intend. A screenshot of a chat includes names and phone numbers. A photo of a parcel shows your home address. A picture of your new car has the license plate in it, a boarding pass has a booking code, and a group photo includes someone who would rather not be online. A bank transfer screenshot sent as proof of payment carries your account number.
With this tool you draw a box over each of those areas and cover it. You can draw as many boxes as you need on the same image, move them and resize them until they sit exactly over the name, the number or the face.
Pixelate, blur or black out
Pixelate replaces the area with large colored squares, the mosaic look familiar from the news. Blur smooths it into a soft smear. Black out covers it with a solid black rectangle. Pixelating and blurring are less harsh on the eye, so they are popular for faces and for backgrounds in photos meant to look good.
Each effect has three strengths. A light setting softens the area while leaving its general shape visible; a strong one leaves nothing recognizable. Choose based on what you are hiding, not only on what looks nicest.
For numbers and personal data, use black
This is the important caution. A light pixelation or blur over text can leave enough of a pattern for someone to guess what was underneath, especially with digits in a familiar format such as a card number, an ID number or an account number. If the information is sensitive, cover it with solid black. A black box leaves nothing to guess.
Keep pixelate and blur for things where a rough impression does no harm: a face in a crowd, a house number in the background, a logo you would rather not show.
The hidden part is really gone
The effect is not a layer placed on top of the picture that someone could lift off later. When you process the image, the pixels inside each box are replaced in the final file. The original content of those areas is not in the download.
The original photo on your device is not modified, so keep it if you may need the uncensored version, and share only the new file. The tool works with one image at a time, and you draw the boxes yourself: it does not find faces or text automatically, so look over the whole picture before processing, including reflections and small details near the edges.
Private while you make it private
It would make little sense to upload a sensitive picture to a server in order to hide its sensitive parts. Here the image is processed in your browser and never leaves your phone or computer. Nothing is stored, there is no account, and the tool is free with no watermark.
If the document is a PDF rather than an image, use “Redact PDF”, which removes the hidden text from the file.