Black Out

Hide sensitive parts of an image

This app can be useful when you want to post a screenshot or photo on the web that contains some information you don’t want to be revealed. Maybe you want to share a screenshot of a Slack conversation on Twitter but hide some private information. It also removes all metadata, like when and where a photo was captured.


Frequently Asked Questions

I have a feature request, bug report, or some feedback

Send it here.

Can you support blurring and pixelation?

Blurring and pixelation are intentionally not supported as they can sometimes be reversed. The only reliable way to redact something is to put a black box over it.

I can already do this in the Preview app!

You can do this in any graphics app. The point of this app is to make the task super easy to do. Most graphics apps, like Preview, Pixelmator, and Photoshop, preserve metadata, which means you could accidentally leak information like the capture location. Black Out strips out all metadata. It can also be run directly from Finder as a Quick Action.

Does it support PDF?

You can open a PDF document, but you have to export it as a PNG image. It’s almost impossible to reliably export redacted PDFs.

What is the text in the icon?

It’s from Apple’s inspirational “Here’s to the Crazy Ones” TV commercial.

More FAQs…


Older Versions

These are free for everyone but they will not run on newer macOS versions.