Smart Redaction
Smart Redaction scans a capture for sensitive content and proposes redactions for you to review. All detection runs on your Mac — nothing is sent anywhere.
What it detects
Section titled “What it detects”The built-in detectors (always available) look for:
- Contact details — email addresses, phone numbers, mailing addresses.
- Financial data — credit-card numbers (Luhn-validated, plus cardholder name and expiry), IBANs, bank routing numbers, crypto wallet addresses, and money amounts on financial documents.
- Identity — Social Security numbers and passport machine-readable zones (MRZ).
- Recovery secrets — 2FA backup codes and recovery-code grids.
- API keys & tokens — AWS, Stripe, GitHub, GitLab, Google, Slack,
OpenAI, Anthropic, SendGrid, and Twilio keys; JWTs and
Bearertokens; private keys; URLs with embedded credentials; and other high-entropy secrets. - Names, organizations, and locations, plus labeled sensitive fields (“Account number: …”).
The enhanced on-device model
Section titled “The enhanced on-device model”For detection by meaning rather than pattern, Sealshot offers an enhanced on-device redaction model (~400 MB, Apple Silicon). The first time it would help, Sealshot asks before downloading — decline and the built-in detectors keep working. The model is document-aware: it recognizes what a financial statement or an ID card is, and applies detection tuned to it. Manage it (download or remove) in Settings → On-Device AI.
On macOS 26 with Apple Intelligence, an optional Thorough scan toggle adds a final Apple Intelligence pass to catch sensitive items the detectors miss — slower, but more complete.
Running a scan
Section titled “Running a scan”- On demand — click the Smart Redact button in the editor toolbar. If nothing sensitive is found, the button briefly shows Nothing found. When a focus area is set, the scan covers just that region.
- Automatically — turn on Scan captures automatically in Settings → On-Device AI → Smart Redaction (off by default) and every capture is scanned as it opens.
Automatic scanning, the enhanced model, and Thorough scan live in
Settings → On-Device AI.
Reviewing and applying
Section titled “Reviewing and applying”A scan opens the Smart Redaction panel listing everything found. Each row leads with the flagged text (masked — only the first and last few characters), plus its category and why it was flagged.
High-risk items start checked — card numbers, keys and tokens, IDs, emails, phones, addresses. Lower-confidence finds (names, organizations, locations) start unchecked so you stay in control. Select all / Deselect all flip the whole list, and hovering a row spotlights the matching region on the capture. Then press Apply; Cancel dismisses the panel without changing anything.
High-risk items pre-checked; hover a row to see where it is.
Applied items are covered with a solid fill, so the text underneath is unrecoverable in the exported image. They’re added as regular blur annotations in one undo step, so a single ⌘Z removes them all, and you can select, move, or delete any of them afterward like other annotations.
Redacting manually
Section titled “Redacting manually”For anything Smart Redaction doesn’t catch — faces, logos, handwriting, images — paint over it with the blur tool using Solid fill, which leaves nothing recoverable in the exported image.