To redact a document is to black out the private parts, like names, addresses and account numbers, before you share it.
Every redaction tool we tried asked for the same thing first: upload the document. The contract, the medical record, the HR file. The very document you’re trying to protect gets sent to a stranger’s computer before anything is hidden.
The other option was drawing black boxes by hand in a PDF program. That’s slow, it’s easy to miss something, and, as we explain in another post, it often doesn’t remove anything at all.
So we built Veil. It’s an app for your computer that finds private details in a document and removes them, without the document ever leaving your computer. It even works with no internet connection.
How it works
Open a document in Veil: a PDF, a Word file, or even a photo of a page taken with your phone. Within seconds, Veil highlights everything that looks private:
- People: names
- Contact details: phone numbers, email addresses and home addresses
- Numbers that identify someone: Social Security, bank account, credit card, driver’s license and medical record numbers
- Dates: such as birthdays
- …and dozens of other kinds of personal information
You look over what it found, add or remove anything, and save a clean copy. That’s it.
Why “on your computer” matters
Most tools that do this work by sending your file over the internet to be processed somewhere else. That means trusting someone else with exactly the information you’re trying to keep private.
Veil does all of its work on your own computer. Your documents aren’t uploaded to us or to anyone else. We never see them, so they can’t be leaked, sold or hacked from our side.
How good is it?
Honestly: very good, but not perfect.
In our tests on real-world documents, Veil caught about 9 out of every 10 private details. It also sometimes hides things that didn’t need hiding, like a common first name in an everyday sentence. In most of our tests, it matched or beat much larger tools that need powerful servers to run.
That’s why Veil always shows you what it found before you save anything. Think of it as a very fast, very thorough first pass. You still give every page a final read before you send it.
When you save, the private details are really gone
A black box drawn on top of a PDF can hide words from your eyes while leaving them in the file for anyone to copy. Veil doesn’t do that. When it saves your document, the private details are removed from the file itself, along with hidden information like the author’s name and, for photos, the location where they were taken.
If you’d like a record, Veil can also create a short certificate listing what was removed and from which pages, without repeating the private details themselves.
Asking AI about a document, safely
Many people now ask tools like ChatGPT to summarize a contract or explain a medical letter. That usually means pasting in everyone’s names and details.
Veil has a built-in assistant that works with your own ChatGPT or Claude account, but it only sends the redacted version. The AI sees “Person 1” instead of a real name, so you get help with the document without giving away who it’s about. Veil can show you exactly what the AI will see before anything is sent.
What it doesn’t do (yet)
- It isn’t a full PDF editor. You can add text, notes and signatures, but you can’t rewrite a document’s existing paragraphs.
- It’s for computers, not phones. It runs on Mac (with Apple’s own chips), Windows and Linux.
- It doesn’t store or share files online. That’s on purpose, but it means you send documents the way you already do.
- It can miss things. Always review before you send.
What it costs
$129 once for Personal, or $249 once for Professional, which adds folder-at-a-time redaction, certificates and a mode tuned for healthcare records. There’s no monthly subscription for individuals, and there’s a free 14-day trial with everything included.
We’d love your feedback, especially if you’re a paralegal, work in a clinic, or redact documents as part of your job. What would make Veil part of your week?