pdf-redactor

Batch protect, unlock, and permanently redact sensitive information from PDF documents.

pdf-redactor is a command-line tool for processing multiple PDF files at once. It can password-protect PDFs, remove password protection, redact literal text or regular expression matches, and generate an audit report of everything it processed.

It was built for repetitive workflows where many documents contain the same confidential information and need to be sanitized quickly.

Note

This tool works with text-based PDFs. Scanned PDFs are images and require OCR before they can be searched or redacted.

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Features

• Password-protect PDF documents
• Remove password protection
• Batch process entire folders
• Redact literal text
• Redact using regular expressions
• Built-in presets (email, PAN, phone numbers, URLs, Aadhaar, IPv4)
• Custom pattern files
• TOML configuration support
• Dry-run mode
• JSON audit reports
• Rich CLI progress bar
• Continue processing even if one file fails
• Preserve original files

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Installation

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/<your-username>/pdf-redactor.git
cd pdf-redactor

Create a virtual environment:

Windows

python -m venv .venv
.venv\Scripts\activate

Linux / macOS

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate

Install the package:

pip install -e .

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Quick Start

Protect a PDF:

pdf-redactor protect document.pdf protected.pdf

Unlock a PDF:

pdf-redactor unlock protected.pdf unlocked.pdf

Redact every PDF inside a folder:

pdf-redactor redact input output \
    --password 1234 \
    --preset email \
    --preset pan

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Usage

Protect a PDF

pdf-redactor protect input.pdf protected.pdf

---

Unlock a PDF

pdf-redactor unlock protected.pdf unlocked.pdf

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Redact literal text

pdf-redactor redact input output \
    --password 1234 \
    --match "John Doe"

Multiple matches:

pdf-redactor redact input output \
    --password 1234 \
    --match "John Doe" \
    --match "Confidential"

---

Redact using regex

pdf-redactor redact input output \
    --password 1234 \
    --regex "[A-Z]{5}[0-9]{4}[A-Z]"

Multiple regex patterns are supported.

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Use built-in presets

Instead of writing regex manually:

pdf-redactor redact input output \
    --password 1234 \
    --preset email \
    --preset phone \
    --preset pan

Available presets include:

• email
• phone
• pan
• aadhaar
• ipv4
• url

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Load matches from a file

patterns.txt

John Doe
Confidential
Internal Use Only

Run:

pdf-redactor redact input output \
    --password 1234 \
    --match-file patterns.txt

---

Configuration file

company.toml

presets = [
    "email",
    "pan",
]

matches = [
    "Confidential",
]

regexes = [
    "\\b\\d{10}\\b",
]

Run:

pdf-redactor redact input output \
    --password 1234 \
    --config company.toml

Command-line arguments and configuration can be combined.

---

Dry run

Preview what would be redacted without modifying any files.

pdf-redactor redact input output \
    --password 1234 \
    --preset email \
    --dry-run

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JSON report

Generate a machine-readable report.

pdf-redactor redact input output \
    --password 1234 \
    --preset email \
    --report report.json

Example:

{
  "summary": {
    "tool_version": "1.0.0",
    "generated_at": "2026-07-05T12:34:56+00:00",
    "pdfs_scanned": 5,
    "literal_hits": 8,
    "regex_hits": 21,
    "total_hits": 29,
    "dry_run": false
  },
  "files": [
    {
      "name": "invoice.pdf",
      "status": "success",
      "literal_hits": 2,
      "regex_hits": 5,
      "total_hits": 7
    }
  ]
}

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Project Structure

pdf-redactor/

├── src/
│   └── pdf_redactor/
│       ├── cli.py
│       ├── config.py
│       ├── console.py
│       ├── presets.py
│       ├── protect.py
│       ├── redactor.py
│       └── unlock.py
│
├── tests/
├── examples/
├── pyproject.toml
└── README.md

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How It Works

1. Unlock the input PDF (if required).
2. Search every page for literal and/or regex matches.
3. Apply permanent PDF redactions.
4. Save the processed document.
5. Generate an optional JSON report.

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Limitations

• Works only with text-based PDFs.
• Does not perform OCR.
• Password-protected batch redaction assumes the input PDFs share the same password.
• Regex matches depend on the extracted text from the PDF.

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Testing

Run the test suite:

pytest

Run with coverage:

pytest --cov=pdf_redactor

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Why I Built This

I had a folder full of password-protected PDFs that all contained the same sensitive information. Unlocking and redacting them one by one was repetitive, so I wrote a small tool to automate the process.

It grew from a simple script into a reusable command-line utility that others might find useful too.

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License

MIT