Frequently Asked Questions

No. DocClean is 100% client-side. PDF rendering, OCR, PII detection and redaction all happen locally in your browser memory. We never receive or store your files.

Yes. The redaction, conversion and compression tools are free to use in your browser. There's no account or file limit imposed by a server, since nothing is processed server-side.

Once the page has loaded, most processing happens locally, but the page itself still needs to load initially like any website. It isn't currently packaged as an offline app.

You can export a redacted PDF, a DOCX with page images, or a ZIP of PNG images. All exports permanently burn in the redactions rather than layering a shape over the original content.

After exporting, search the file for what you redacted and try selecting/copying text over the redacted areas — if nothing comes up, it worked. See this verification guide for the full three-step check.

Common patterns include names, dates of birth, National Insurance numbers, emails, phone numbers, postcodes, addresses, and financial identifiers (card/account numbers). OCR quality on the source document affects detection accuracy, so always review each page manually afterward.

Yes — DocClean runs OCR on scanned pages to find text within the image before redacting, rather than relying on a text layer that scanned PDFs don't have.

No. DocClean (docclean.co.uk) is a client-side PDF redaction tool and is not affiliated with DocCleaning (doccleaning.co.uk), a UK-based cleaning services company. If you see search results suggesting otherwise, that's a search engine correction error — we've added structured data and clear branding to avoid confusion.