Drawing a black rectangle on top of sensitive text feels like redaction. It isn’t. The words are still in the PDF — copy-and-paste-able, searchable, extractable. pdfMachine redacts properly: the marked content is deleted from the file, not hidden.
Removed, not just hidden.
When you apply a redact in pdfMachine, the underlying text and graphics are stripped out of the PDF’s content stream. There’s nothing left behind the black bar.
Search-proof, copy-proof.
Recipients can’t Ctrl+F it, can’t select-and-copy it, can’t pull it out programmatically. The redacted content isn’t in the file anymore.
Mark, review, apply.
Sweep over the regions you want gone, review your marks, then apply once. The saved PDF carries no trace of the original.
Black bars on top are theatre. Real redaction is removal.
Gone means gone.