Introducing RedactGuru: redact sensitive documents on your own computer

Most of us have a document we'd like help with but can't share as it is: a lease to summarise, a bank statement for an accountant, a medical letter we want to ask an AI assistant about. The details that make it sensitive — names, addresses, account numbers, ID numbers — are usually a small part of the page, but finding every one of them by hand is slow, and missing one is easy.

RedactGuru is a desktop app that does the finding for you. Drop in a PDF, a scan or a photo, and it highlights the sensitive details it finds. You check them, and it saves a permanently redacted copy.

How it works

Drop a file. RedactGuru scans every page on your computer. Scanned pages and photos are read with built-in text recognition (OCR), included with the 7-Day Pass and Pro.

Review the highlights. Clear anything flagged by mistake and click any text it missed to add it. Nothing is removed until you've checked it.

Export. RedactGuru saves a redacted copy, then reads the finished file again to make sure nothing you removed can still be found.

What it looks for

RedactGuru detects names, email addresses, phone numbers and street addresses, along with the numbers that tend to hide in paperwork: credit cards, IBANs and bank account numbers, passports, driver's licences, health IDs such as Medicare and NHS numbers, dates of birth, US Social Security numbers, Australian Tax File Numbers, and company numbers such as ABNs and VAT numbers.

Detection is built on Presidio, the open-source framework for finding personal data, extended with our own rules and validators. It currently works on English-language documents.

Your documents stay on your computer

Detection and redaction run entirely on your computer. Turn off Wi‑Fi and it works exactly the same; the app only goes online to check your sign-in and subscription and to look for updates. It doesn't keep your documents, copies of them, or a record of what you redacted.

It's also real redaction. Many tools just draw a box over the text, and the words underneath can still be selected and copied. RedactGuru flattens each redacted page, so what you remove is actually gone.

Redacting before you use AI

More and more documents end up pasted into ChatGPT and other AI tools, where they may be stored on someone else's servers. Blacking everything out protects the data but leaves the AI with nothing to work with. So as well as Black box and Mask, RedactGuru can replace each detail with a numbered label like [Name 1]. The same value always gets the same number, so the AI can still tell who's who and give you a useful answer.

This works across a whole folder too: [Name 1] in the lease is still [Name 1] in the amendment, so related documents still make sense together.

Getting started

RedactGuru is available now for Macs with Apple silicon running macOS 14 or later, and a Windows version is on its way. You can also redact PDFs in your browser with RedactGuru Cloud.

The Free plan covers unlimited documents up to 5 pages each, with no account needed. For longer files, a 7-Day Pass covers a one-off project and Pro covers the year. Every payment comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

We'd love to hear what you think. If something doesn't work the way you expect, or there's a detail you'd like RedactGuru to catch, email support@redactguru.com.