Hide info in screenshots: blur isn’t enough

By Ismail Farooq · Updated 30 September 2026

Before you post a screenshot of an order, a chat or a document, you usually hide something: a name, an address, a card number, a QR code. Some ways of hiding it only look safe. The rule is simple: cover the pixels with a solid block and save a new flat image. Everything else has a way to fail.

Ways of hiding that can be undone

• Light blur. Blur averages nearby pixels. Short text in a known font, such as a card number or an order ID, can sometimes be matched by trying every possible value and blurring it the same way. Heavy blur on a face is fine; light blur on text is not.
• Small-block pixelation. The same weakness. Tools exist that recover pixelated text from screenshots when the font and block size are predictable. Blocks larger than the text height are much safer, but a solid box is safer still.
• Semi-transparent highlighter or marker. A marker at less than full opacity can often be read by raising the brightness and contrast. Check that the pen in your phone’s markup tool is fully opaque.
• A black box in a PDF or a layered file. A shape drawn on top of text in a PDF, Word document or layered image leaves the text underneath. Anyone can select it, copy it or move the shape. Flatten the result to an image instead.
• Cropping in an editor that keeps the original. Some phone and PC editors let you undo a crop later because the full image is kept in the file. Export a copy rather than sharing the edited original.

What works

1. Crop first. If the private part is near an edge, cut it off with the Image Cropper. Removed pixels can’t be recovered.
2. Cover the rest with a solid box. In Censor part of an image, tick Only part of the image, position the region, and tick Solid black box. For a face, pixelation with a large block size is fine.
3. Download it as a new file. The download is a flat PNG or JPEG with the box burned in. There are no layers to remove.
4. Remove the metadata. Photos straight from a phone camera can contain GPS coordinates, the device model and the time. Screenshots usually don’t, but edited photos might. Check with the EXIF Viewer and strip it with the Metadata Remover. Our EXIF and privacy guide explains what each field reveals.

ImgVx runs these tools in your browser, so the screenshot you are cleaning is not uploaded to us.

What to look for before you share

• Names and faces of other people in the chat or photo, including profile pictures.
• Numbers: phone numbers, order and tracking numbers, account and card digits, booking references.
• Codes: QR codes and barcodes on tickets, boarding passes and parcels. They often contain the full booking or tracking reference even when the printed text is hidden.
• Addresses and places: parcel labels, street signs, house numbers, and the view from a window.
• The status bar and notifications: the network name, notification previews and other people’s messages.
• Reflections in glasses, windows and screens.

When a screenshot isn’t the right tool

For a document you have to send to a company, such as a bank statement or an ID, hiding parts of it may not be allowed and can get the document rejected. Ask what they need and send it through their own secure upload rather than as a picture in a chat.