How to hide personal information in a screenshot before sharing it

A screenshot is often the quickest way to show a problem: a bank error, a delivery update, a funny message. It is also the quickest way to share a phone number, an email address, an order number or a friend's name with everyone who sees the post. Hiding them takes a minute, but it has to be done properly.

Option 1: crop it out

The safest way to hide something is to remove it entirely. If the private detail is near an edge, such as a name in a header or an account number at the bottom, cut it off with Crop Image. Cropped pixels are gone from the saved file; nothing is left to recover.

Option 2: blur it heavily

1. Open Blur Faces in a Photo. Despite the name, it blurs any area you choose, including text.
2. Drag a box over each detail you want hidden: names, numbers, addresses, profile pictures.
3. Turn the blur strength up until the text is a smooth smear with no letter shapes visible.
4. Download. The blur is baked into the pixels, not a layer on top that can be removed.

The screenshot is processed in your browser and is not uploaded.

Why light blurring is not enough

A light blur or coarse pixelation over short text can sometimes be guessed back. If the font and the kind of text are known, such as a card number or a short code, a computer can try likely values, blur them the same way, and compare. Heavy blur over a box larger than the text defeats that. If in doubt, crop instead, or blur so strongly that even you could not tell how many characters were there.

What people forget to hide

• Notification banners at the top of the screen, showing someone else's message.
• Other browser tabs and the address bar, which can contain account or order numbers in the URL.
• Profile pictures and names of other people in a chat.
• Barcodes and QR codes on tickets and boarding passes. They can contain booking references and full names even when the visible text is hidden.
• Partial numbers. The last four digits of a card plus a name and a date can be enough for social engineering.
• Reflections in photos of screens.

Black boxes in PDFs are different

Drawing a black rectangle over text in a PDF often hides nothing: the text is still underneath and can be copied out. For PDFs, use a real redaction tool; see how to redact a PDF properly. In a screenshot or photo, by contrast, an edit that changes the pixels does remove the information, as long as you share the edited file and not the original.

Check the file, not just the picture

Photos of screens taken with a phone camera can carry the phone's location and model in their metadata. Screenshots usually carry little, but if you are sharing a camera photo, strip it with the EXIF Viewer and Remover. For faces and number plates in ordinary photos, see blurring faces and number plates.