RedactOffline vs Apple Markup
Apple Markup, built into the Photos app, lets you manually draw a black box or shape over part of a photo — but the edit is non-destructive, so anyone with access to the photo can undo it with "Revert to Original." RedactOffline automatically finds and classifies text, then flattens the redaction into the exported image so there's no edit to revert. Markup is still the better tool for quick annotation you don't need to keep private.
| RedactOffline | Apple Markup | |
|---|---|---|
| Text detection | Automatic, typed categories | None — manual only |
| Redaction styles | Solid fill free; blur and pixelate with the one-time purchase | Solid shapes only; no pixelate/blur filter |
| Persistence | Flattened into a new bitmap | Non-destructive; reversible via "Revert to Original" |
| Platforms | iPhone, iOS 16+ | iPhone, iPad, Mac |
| Network access | None | None for local edits |
| Price | Free with solid fill and 10 lifetime exports; $6.99 one-time adds blur, pixelate, and unlimited exports | Free, built-in |
What Markup does well
It's already on every iPhone, it's fast for a one-off annotation, and it covers more than photos — you can markup PDFs and documents in Mail, Notes, and Files too. For anything you're not relying on to actually stay hidden — circling a spot in a screenshot for a coworker, adding an arrow, sketching a quick note — it's the right tool, and installing anything else would be overkill.
Where it falls short as a redaction tool
Two places. First, there's no automatic detection — you have to spot every phone number, address, or name yourself, which is easy to get wrong on a busy screenshot. Second, and more importantly, the edit is reversible by design. Photos treats Markup like any other non-destructive edit: open the photo, tap Edit, tap Revert to Original, and the black box is gone, no special software needed. That's a reasonable default for a general photo editor. It's a real problem if you're using it to hide something you actually need hidden — see why blurred screenshots can be unredacted for the same issue in other apps.
When Markup is the better choice
- You're annotating, not redacting — arrows, circles, notes for a colleague.
- You need to mark up a PDF or document, which RedactOffline doesn't support.
- You're on an iPad or Mac, where RedactOffline isn't available.
- Nothing in the image needs to stay hidden from someone who might open the photo's edit history.
Otherwise, if the box is covering something you need to actually remove — not just visually cover — use RedactOffline's automatic detection and flattened export instead. See the step-by-step guide.
Using both together
That's a reasonable workflow. Some people use Markup for quick, casual notes on a screenshot — an arrow pointing at a bug, a circle around a UI element — and reach for RedactOffline specifically when the photo is going somewhere outside a trusted conversation and actually needs sensitive text removed rather than just marked up. The two aren't competing for the same job; Markup is a general annotation tool that happens to include a black box, and RedactOffline is built around the assumption that a redaction needs to survive being reopened by whoever receives the image.
Limitations
- RedactOffline: iPhone only, iOS 16.0+, text only (no faces), no PDF or video support.
- Markup: no automatic detection, no pixelation, and non-destructive by default — appropriate for annotation, not for hiding sensitive information from someone else.