What you can hide with this tool
Before posting a screenshot or photo, it is worth a quick look for details you would not want strangers to see. Common things to cover:
- Faces of children, bystanders or anyone who has not agreed to appear online.
- License plates on cars in street photos, dashcam stills and sale listings.
- Personal info in screenshots: email addresses, phone numbers, home addresses, names in chat threads, order numbers, QR codes and barcodes on tickets or boarding passes.
- Credentials: API keys, passwords, account and card numbers that slipped into a bug report or tutorial.
Draw one rectangle per area. You can add as many as you need before downloading.
Pixelate, blur or black bar: which is safer?
The three effects look different and protect differently.
| Effect | Looks | Protection for text |
|---|---|---|
| Black bar | Solid block | Strongest: original pixels are gone |
| Pixelate, large blocks | Mosaic | Strong when blocks are bigger than the letters |
| Pixelate, small blocks | Fine mosaic | Weak: letter shapes can still be guessed |
| Blur | Soft smear | Weakest for text, fine for backgrounds |
Here is the honest catch: light blur and small pixel blocks do not destroy information, they only average it. Researchers have shown that short strings like numbers or passwords can sometimes be recovered by comparing the blurred area with blurred versions of guessed text. That is why a black bar, or pixelation with large blocks, is the safer choice for any text. Set the block size so each block is at least as tall as the text itself, and no individual characters should be readable when you zoom in.
For faces, large-block pixelation is usually enough to make someone unrecognizable. Blur is best kept for softening a distracting background, not for privacy.
Tips for reliable censoring
- Cover a margin. Draw the rectangle a little larger than the text or face so edges of letters or hair do not peek out.
- Check every copy. Names often appear twice in a screenshot, such as in a header and in the message body. Profile pictures count too.
- Zoom in on the preview before downloading. What looks hidden on a small screen can be readable at full size.
- Short secrets need a bar. For a 4-digit PIN or a one-time code, use a black bar rather than any mosaic.
- Watch reflections. Glasses, windows and glossy screens can show what you meant to hide.
Format and privacy notes
The download keeps the format of your original. PNG is a good choice for screenshots because text edges stay sharp everywhere except the censored areas. Images can be up to 8,000 pixels per side.
Because the censoring happens in your browser, the uncensored original is never sent anywhere. The saved file contains only the edited pixels, so there is no hidden layer that could reveal the covered area, unlike some document editors that just draw a shape on top. Location data in the file is removed by default as an extra safeguard.