How it works

Studio finds and removes personal data the same way as PDF Redaction Online: it reads each page's text, runs the detectors you chose and burns the boxes into a new file. What Studio changes is the path a document takes. Instead of one file open in the editor, your PDFs go into a document library and are scanned in the background, one after another, before you open them to review.

1. Add documents

You sign in, then drop one or more PDFs on the dashboard or a project page. Each file is stored in your browser's storage (IndexedDB), in the workspace and project you are in, with the status Created. The file isn't uploaded when you add it. There is no per-document page or file-size limit. See Document library.

2. Credit check

Before a document is scanned, Studio checks your workspace's balance: the free pages left this month plus page credits must cover all of the document's pages. If they don't, the document gets the status Insufficient Credits and no page is scanned, so you are never left with a half-processed file. Upgrade or top up, then process it again.

3. Background queue

Documents are scanned one at a time, in the order you added them. Running one document at a time keeps memory use and the load on your computer predictable while you do other work.

• The queue keeps going while you move around Studio in the same tab.
• If you close or reload the tab, the queue stops. Documents left at Created or Processing are picked up again the next time you open Studio.
• The queue uses the detection and OCR settings you last saved in the editor's Settings dialog in this browser. Change them before you drop a batch.
• The first document in a browser downloads the AI models and shows Downloading AI models (x%). Later documents reuse the cached models.

The status shows Processing (n/N) while pages are scanned and Completed when every page is done.

4. Read and detect, page by page

Each page goes through the same steps as in the online editor: the text layer is read, or OCR runs for scans and pictures; then rule-based detection, face detection and one AI model (Local NER or Cloud PII) run on it. These steps are described once in How PDF Redaction Online works.

Every scanned page is counted against your workspace's allowance as soon as it is done, so the usage card on the dashboard updates while the queue runs. See Usage and limits. Click a document's status to see how long OCR, object detection and PII detection took on each page.

5. Review in the editor

When you open a document, Studio takes it out of the queue and the editor finishes any pages that are left. The findings are already there, so you go straight to reviewing.

There is no Save button for your work: every change you make in the editor is saved to the library automatically. You can close the document, come back later in the same browser and continue where you stopped. Mark the document as reviewed when you are done, and its status changes to Reviewed.

6. Save the redacted PDF

You can build the redacted file in two places:

Both build the same kind of file as the online editor: pages rendered as images with the boxes burned in and a clean text layer, see Export. The file is downloaded as redacted-<original name>.pdf. The original stays in the library, so you can reopen the document and change the redactions.

7. Sync to cloud (optional)

Until you sync, a document exists only in this browser. Sync to cloud uploads the original PDF, your redactions and the document's details to your Studio's server, so you can open it on another device or share it with your workspace. Local documents never leave your device. Conflicts between two edited copies are covered in Document library.

What leaves your browser

For a self-hosted install, the addresses are set in Configuration. Studio Desktop runs the same steps inside an app on your computer.

Next steps