Is the screenshot redactor free?
Yes. Redacting screenshots is completely free, with no signup and no watermark on the exported image.
Does it upload my screenshot to a server?
No. This tool redacts screenshots entirely in your browser, so the image and its sensitive details never leave your device.
Does exporting remove screenshot metadata too?
Yes. The export is rebuilt from a browser canvas, which strips common source metadata rather than carrying the original file details forward.
When is a black or white box better than blur or pixelate?
Use a solid black or white box when the hidden area must be completely unreadable, or when a clean block fits the screenshot style better than a softer mask.
Why include crop in a screenshot redactor?
Because the cleanest privacy fix is often to remove the extra context entirely instead of masking multiple regions one by one.
Is blurring a screenshot actually safe?
It depends on what is under the blur. Blur is safe for a face, a photo, or a background you want softened. It is not safe for text, because text has a small, known set of possible values and a rendered guess can be blurred and compared against yours until it matches. Anything that is text and secret should get a black or white box instead.
Can the original pixels be recovered from the exported file?
No. Every action is baked into a flat canvas and the file is encoded from that canvas, so the exported PNG, JPG, or WebP contains only the redacted pixels. There is no hidden layer and no undo data in the file. The risk with blur and pixelation is statistical reconstruction of what was there, not recovery of the original bytes.
Which export format should I use for a redacted screenshot?
PNG. It is lossless, it keeps UI text crisp, and it adds no compression artifacts around the redacted edges. JPG and WebP are available with a quality slider from 45% to 98%, defaulting to 96%, but a JPG of a screenshot smears sharp text edges and gains nothing over a well-compressed PNG.
Can I redact several areas in one pass?
Yes. Each rectangle you draw is added to a stack of actions, and you can mix blur, pixelate, black box, white box, and crop across a single screenshot. The stack is applied in order onto a fresh copy of the original, and you can revert the last action or clear them all without reloading the file.
How do I redact something small and precise?
Use the zoom control, which runs from 20% to 400%. Zoom in until the target fills the editor, switch the pointer to select mode, and drag your rectangle. The selection is stored in source-image coordinates, so a rectangle drawn at 400% zoom is exactly as accurate as the pixels underneath it.
Does anything about the screenshot leave my machine?
The image does not. Decoding, redaction, and encoding all run in the page on your own device, so a screenshot of an internal dashboard or a customer record never touches a server. The only outbound request is a credit counter that carries the tool name and nothing else.