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Free tool | 100% Local

Blur any part of an image

Drag a box over a name, a number or a face and it is blurred, free, in your browser, on any device. The image never leaves your computer: no upload, no account, no watermark.

100% local — the image never leaves your device.

How to blur part of an image

  1. Drop, paste or pick an image: a screenshot, a photo, a scan.

  2. Drag a box over each part to hide, or press Auto-detect to box emails, card numbers, IBANs and API keys for you.

  3. Pick blur, pixelate or a solid box, set the strength, and download the result as a PNG.

Blur text in an image or a screenshot

Take the screenshot, press Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on a Mac) on this page, and it opens in the editor. No saving and uploading first. Auto-detect reads the text on your device and boxes emails, card numbers, IBANs, US Social Security numbers and API keys. For text, push the strength up: in our study, blur that was weaker than about a third of the text height could often be read back. For passwords and card numbers, use the solid box.

Is blurring actually safe?

Not always. We blurred, pixelated and redacted sensitive text 480 times and tried to get it back: light blur was recovered exactly in 92–100% of cases, and 4-pixel pixelation in 71%. The rule that held: if the blur radius (or pixel block) is less than a third of the text height, assume it is reversible.

That is why the safest choice for card numbers, addresses and keys is solid redaction — the only treatment in our study that leaked nothing.

Read the full study

Blur, pixelate or black out: which to use

All three hide a part of the picture, but they are not equally safe. Pick by what you are hiding, not by how it looks:

  • Blur

    Soft and natural-looking — right for backgrounds, a crowd or a messy desk. On text it is the weakest option: a light blur can often be read back, so push the strength well above the text height.

  • Pixelate

    The classic censor mosaic, for faces, screens and labels. Large blocks hide things reliably; small ones do not, because the rough shape of each letter survives.

  • Redact

    A solid box. Nothing under it survives, so use it for card numbers, passwords, addresses and API keys — anything that would matter if someone recovered it.

Want the whole picture pixelated — a mosaic or an 8-bit look? Pixelate the whole image in one step, with a block size made for it.

Covering text with black bars? Censor the image: emails, card numbers and keys are found and blacked out for you.

Blur part of a picture on iPhone or Android

The iPhone's Photos app can crop and mark up a picture, but it has no tool to blur one area, and on Android it depends on the phone. This page does it without installing an app:

  1. Open this page in Safari or Chrome, tap Choose image and pick a photo or screenshot.
  2. Drag a box with your finger over the part to hide — or tap auto-detect to find emails, card numbers and phone numbers in a screenshot.
  3. Pick blur, pixelate or redact and tap Download. On an iPhone the PNG is saved to Files → Downloads; share it to Photos from there.

Blur the whole picture or just one part

Set Area to Whole image and the entire picture is blurred at the strength you set; Pixelate and Redact work the same way. Draw a box and it goes back to Parts only. To soften everything behind a person, use the background blur tool: it finds the people and blurs the rest. For a whole picture turned into a mosaic, pixelate the image in one step.

Why nothing gets uploaded

Every blur tool that uploads your image makes a copy of exactly the thing you are trying to hide. This page does the work in your browser with the canvas API: the file stays on your device, works offline once loaded, and there is nothing on our servers to leak, subpoena or train on. The same principle as our browser extension — protection that runs where the data already is.

Working with a PDF instead? Our free PDF redaction tool rebuilds the file as flattened page images — no hidden text layer, no metadata.

The PNG you download here carries no metadata. Sending a photo unblurred? Remove its metadata — location, phone and date — and keep the original quality.

Blurring your screen instead of a screenshot?

If you share your screen or record demos, blur the live page before it is ever captured — one click in the browser, auto-detection included.

FAQ

No. The whole tool runs in your browser with the canvas API. The image never leaves your device, and the download is generated locally. Auto-detect fetches the text-recognition model from this site once, then also runs entirely on your device.

Light blur — yes, often. In our 480-case study, text blurred with a small radius came back exactly in 92–100% of attempts, and light pixelation in 71%. Use a strength well above the text height, or solid redaction, which leaked nothing.

Yes. It is a regular web page — open it in Safari or Chrome on your phone, pick a photo or screenshot, and draw boxes with your finger. No app needed.

Drop the image here, choose Pixelate in the effect menu and drag a box over the part to hide. Raise the strength until the area is a few large blocks — small blocks can leave text readable — then download the PNG. The rest of the picture stays untouched.

Open this page in Safari, tap Choose image, drag a box over the area with your finger and tap Download. The Photos app has no blur tool of its own, so this saves installing an app; the result lands in Files → Downloads.

Email addresses, credit card numbers (validated with the Luhn check), phone numbers, IBANs, US SSNs and API keys or tokens (OpenAI, Anthropic, GitHub, AWS, Slack, Google and JWT shapes). It reads the image with on-device OCR and boxes what it finds — you can always add or remove boxes yourself.

Free, no account, no watermark, no upload. We build DataBlur, a screen-privacy browser extension — this tool exists because blurring images well is part of the same problem. If you like it, the extension does the same for live pages.

Yes, on their own pages: blur faces in a photo with the face tool, and the license plate tool does the same for plates. This page detects text, such as emails, card numbers and keys, and lets you box anything else by hand.

Open the picture here, drag a box over the part to hide and pick Blur. Raise the strength until the area is unreadable, then download the PNG. The rest of the picture stays sharp, and nothing is uploaded.

Copy the screenshot and press Ctrl+V (Cmd+V on a Mac) on this page, or drop the file in. Press Auto-detect to box emails, card numbers and keys, add boxes for anything else, and download. For text, a solid box is safer than blur.

For faces and backgrounds, whatever looks right. For text, much stronger than it looks necessary: in our 480-case study, blur weaker than about a third of the text height was often recovered. For card numbers, passwords and keys, use the solid box, which leaked nothing.

Yes. Set Area to Whole image and the entire picture is blurred at the strength you set, or pixelated or blacked out if you pick those. Draw a box or press Auto-detect and it goes back to Parts only. To blur only what is behind a person, use the background blur tool.