Resecta vs Redactly

Resecta is a free, open-source iPhone app that redacts PDFs on-device and verifies the output. A black box drawn over text can leave the text underneath readable; Resecta is designed to remove the text in the regions you mark, not just cover it, then checks the redacted PDF before you share. There is no subscription and no account. What to redact • Search by text, regular expression or a list of terms, and save the searches you reuse. • Scan looks for 17 kinds of personal information, including names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, Social Security numbers, and card and account numbers (many are US formats). • Draw a rectangle by hand over anything else, or cover a page with Mark Whole Page. Search and Scan results arrive unselected; nothing is redacted without your selection. Redact Marks show what will be removed. Tap Redact and Resecta rebuilds the PDF from page images, with the marked regions overwritten in the pixels. Secure Rasterization produces image-only output. Searchable Redaction keeps the text outside your redactions searchable, for PDFs that have a text layer. Check before you share Verification runs 7 checks on Secure Rasterization output and 12 on Searchable Redaction output, including text extraction, OCR, a search of the file's bytes, a metadata check, a re-run of the searches you applied, and a detection sweep. What they report is listed, and sharing a file with reported issues asks you to confirm. Verification is a check, not a substitute for your review. Private by design No accounts, no analytics, no data collection. The app makes no network requests of its own, and you can use it in airplane mode. Good to know • PDFs up to 50 MB and 500 pages. A password-protected PDF opens with its password; the redacted copy is not password-protected. • JPEG, PNG and HEIC images open too, up to 20 at a time from Photos, or one at a time from Files or by dropping it onto an open document. Each becomes one page of a new PDF; the photo's metadata, such as location, is not carried into it, and the redacted copy is always a PDF. • A file the app cannot read in full, or one that carries document JavaScript or a launch action, is refused at import, and the app says why. • Resecta doesn't store your documents or edits; share or save the redacted copy to keep it. • Name detection uses an on-device language model from iOS. Where it is unavailable, name results are reduced and the app says so. Free and open source under Apache-2.0. Source: github.com/Merlin1A/resecta

Need to black out an account number, address or signature in a PDF before you share it? Redactly lets you draw redaction boxes and exports a new PDF where that content is actually removed — not just covered up. Open a PDF, drag to draw black boxes over anything private, page by page, and tap Apply Redaction. Then share the redacted copy or save it to Files. • TRUE REMOVAL — every page with a redaction box is flattened into an image with solid black over your boxes, so the hidden text can't be selected, copied, searched or uncovered by deleting a shape. • DRAW WITH A FINGER — drag to draw a box over text, numbers, photos or signatures; touch and hold a box to remove it, or clear a whole page and start again. • ALL YOUR PAGES — move between pages with the page strip and redact as many pages as you need, up to 300 pages per PDF. • OTHER PAGES STAY SHARP — pages without boxes are copied as they are, so their text stays crisp and selectable, and their links and bookmarks are kept. • NO HIDDEN LEFTOVERS — comments and form annotations are not copied back onto redacted pages — a redacted page carries only what you see on it. • SHARE OR SAVE — send the redacted PDF by Mail or Messages, or save it to Files. Your original file isn't changed. Honest scope: you choose what to redact — Redactly doesn't search for or detect sensitive text automatically, so check every page. Redacted pages become images, so their remaining text is no longer selectable. Password-protected PDFs need to be unlocked first. Everything happens on your iPhone. Your documents are not uploaded and no account is needed. Redacting and previewing are free: check every redacted page before you pay. A one-time $4.99 purchase unlocks saving and sharing the redacted PDF. No subscription, no ads. Questions: overlapmarr@gmail.com