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Free tool | 100% Local

Pixelate an image

Drop a picture and it is pixelated whole, straight away. Set the block size, or switch to parts only to pixelate faces or one corner of it. Free, in your browser: no upload, no account, no watermark.

100% local — the image never leaves your device.

How it works

  1. Drop, paste or pick an image — a photo, a screenshot, anything you want turned into blocks.

  2. The whole image is pixelated at once. Drag the block size from a fine mosaic to big 8-bit squares.

  3. To pixelate only part of it, switch to Parts only and drag boxes, or press Find faces. Then download a PNG.

What people pixelate

Pixelation does two jobs: it hides things, and it makes a look. The usual cases:

  • Faces

    Kids, bystanders and colleagues in photos you post — the mosaic is the classic way to hide a face.

  • Screenshots

    A name, an address or an order number, before a screenshot goes into a chat, a ticket or a post.

  • A retro look

    A whole photo in big blocks for an 8-bit avatar, a thumbnail, or a teaser that hides the reveal.

  • Listings

    House numbers, plates and personal things in photos of a room, a car or an item for sale.

Can pixelation be reversed?

Sometimes, and text is where it fails. We pixelated sensitive text 480 times and tried to read it back: with 4-pixel blocks the exact text came back 71% of the time, and saving the image again as JPEG did not change that. Only once the blocks were at least 0.8 times the height of the letters did recovery fall to chance.

So for text that must stay secret — a password, a card number, an address — use a solid box rather than pixels: the image blur tool's Redact effect leaves nothing underneath. For faces, go big: a light mosaic can still be recognised by people who know the person.

Read our blur recovery study

Why nothing gets uploaded

Pixelating a picture on someone else's server means handing them the very thing you want hidden. Here the work happens on a canvas in your browser: the image is read, pixelated and saved on your device, and the PNG you download carries none of the original's metadata.

Want every face found and blurred instead? Use the face blur tool, or the image blur tool to find emails, card numbers and API keys in a screenshot.

Pixelating your screen instead of a picture?

If you share your screen or record demos, hide the live page before it is ever captured — a name, a number or a whole panel, one click in the browser.

FAQ

No. Pixelating, face detection and export all run in your browser. The face detection model is fetched from this site the first time you use it; the image itself never leaves your device.

Switch to Parts only, then drag a box over each area — or press Find faces to box every face automatically. Every box uses the same block size, and you can remove any of them before you download.

For a retro look, whatever looks right. To hide something, go big: blocks at least as tall as the letters, or a large share of a face. Small blocks keep the rough shape of what is underneath.

Not by sharpening — the detail inside each block is averaged away. But small blocks over text can be guessed back by matching fonts: our study recovered the exact text 71% of the time at 4-pixel blocks. Use large blocks, or a solid box for passwords and numbers.

Yes. It is a regular web page, so it runs in Safari or Chrome on your phone. Finding faces in a large photo can take a few seconds on older devices.

Free, with no sign-up and no watermark. JPG, PNG and WebP open directly; iPhone HEIC photos usually need converting first. The result downloads as a PNG.