Opening this alpha build the first time 1Right-click the app → Open or 2System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway

Cover

for Macv0.16.4 · macOS Sonoma+ · Apple Silicon

Auto redact private files offline before sending to Ai.

The Cover editor with a tax statement open, showing redactions on the page, the document list on the left, and the toolbar across the top.

Drop a PDF in and Cover does the hard part. It finds the private info and redacts it for you, far more precisely than an Ai would (Ai over-redacts leaving a mess to clean-up). Every redaction is then yours to check and fix in seconds with single clicks.

Your original is never touched. The redacted copy saves as name-redacted.pdf next to the original, or click the arrow by Save to choose where it goes.

A few moves to make editing redactions fast.

Most edits only take a click or a simple drag.

One at a time

  • Click a word to redact it.
  • Click a redacted word to un-redact it.

Several at once

  • Click and drag to highlight words and redact them together.
  • Hold ⌥ Option and drag to un-redact several redactions.

Good to know

Turn off a whole page

Toggle on or off an entire page's redactions in the right sidebar view.

The Redact-by-page toggle in the page sidebar

Peek underneath

Hover your cursor over a redaction to see the original text. Or toggle using the eye icon in the header.

The reveal toggle that shows or hides the original text

Bars or token view

Flip bars into tags like [ACCOUNT 1], a structure an Ai can read, not the values.

The bars/tokens segmented toggle in the toolbar

Catch one, redact every copy

Redact a name with a click. Our engine redacts it everywhere else in the PDF for you. Works in reverse, too.

The editor asks: Also redact 1 more Halberd in this document? with Dismiss and Redact all buttons.

What's new

Every release, sharper than the last.

0.16.4LatestJuly 15, 2026
  • Fixed some financial term over redactions.
  • Fixed a rare case on documents with a diagonal watermark where a redaction could be quietly undone.
  • The scrollbar on the PDF now behaves like a normal scrollbar. You get the arrow pointer over it and can grab and drag the scroll thumb.
  • Small polish to how the pointer behaves around the find bar.
0.16.3July 14, 2026
  • Undo (⌘Z) can now undo every change you've made, all the way back to the beginning of your session, even after saving.
  • Press ⌘F to find text in your PDF. Great for confirming something actually got redacted.vh-find-in-document
  • Fixed a bug where scrolling a redacted PDF could flicker.
  • Fixed a math bug in the magic auto-redacting feature.
  • If you saved a redaction report alongside a file, re-editing and saving now updates that report automatically so it always matches the file.
  • Quitting Cover in the middle of a batch now stops its background work cleanly instead of leaving it running.
  • After Cover moves itself into your Applications folder on first launch, it now tidies up the leftover copy in Downloads.
  • Added polish to the menus in Cover.
0.16.2July 12, 2026
  • Rotated and scanned pages now just work. Cover reads sideways, upside-down, and even mirror-image scans, redacts them correctly, and saves them right-side up.
  • Lift a redaction to peek and the original text shows correctly, at the right angle.
  • Cover keeps its automatic updates working even when it wasn't moved into your Applications folder, and offers a one-click fix if updating ever gets stuck.
  • Cleaner redaction on addresses, including the comma between street and city.
  • Fixed a flicker where boxes briefly appeared in the wrong spot when switching between documents.
  • The document list now fills the sidebar instead of stopping short with empty space below.
  • Sidebar search clears itself when you close it, so your files never stay hidden.
  • Starting the tour no longer clears the files you already loaded.
  • Dragging in a stack of PDFs at once now adds all of them.
  • Fixed a rare crash.
0.16.1July 11, 2026
  • New interactive tour: how to redact images.
  • Added crash log reporting to help keep things stable.
  • Fixed over-redaction on medical reports with labels like "Accession" and "Specimen."
0.16.0July 10, 2026
  • Cover now recognizes national ID numbers from five more countries: UK National Insurance numbers, France's social-security numbers (NIR), India's PAN, Italy's Codice Fiscale, and Mexico's RFC and CURP.
  • Enterprise: the redaction certificate now includes a verification summary, confirming the self-checks the file passed before it was saved.
  • Enterprise: after saving, Cover re-opens the finished file and double-checks the redaction, confirming no recoverable text and no leftover edit history. Acrobat paints the box and hopes; Cover checks its work.
  • Better name detection on crowded, form-style documents.
  • If redaction would have wiped out an entire page, Cover restores the original and asks you to review it before that page can be saved.
0.15.2July 7, 2026
  • Extends an expired build 30 more days.
  • Fixed over-redaction of dollar amounts on forms.
  • Fixed a redaction issue with mortgage account numbers.
0.15.1July 6, 2026
  • In the editor, hovering a redaction now highlights its matching row in the terms list on the right and scrolls it into view, so it's easy to see exactly what each box covers.vh-hover-highlight
  • Cover now catches international bank account (IBAN) numbers, and reliably redacts government and immigration forms (like the I-485) that could previously refuse to finish.
  • Phone numbers written with a parenthesized area code, like (415) 555-0172, are now fully covered, and dates of birth get their own labeled entry in the terms list.
  • Cleaner redactions: stray brackets and punctuation no longer cling to the edge of a blacked-out value.
  • Polish to the guided tour and the empty editor canvas: the tour's pointer glides instead of jumping, always starts from a clean sample document, and lives under a tidier Help menu.
0.15.0July 5, 2026
  • New: a guided tour built into Cover. Click "Start the tour" in the left sidebar and Ava walks you through your first redaction in a couple of minutes: hide a word, bring one back, redact a paragraph, lasso a messy block.
  • The document list on the left is cleaner: your files at the top with a count, and the drop zone to add more PDFs right where you'd look for it.
  • The redacted-terms list on the right now groups related items, so a name and address fold into one entry and numbers are ordered by sensitivity, making it quicker to review what was removed and flip any of it on or off.vh-interactive-tour
0.14.2July 2, 2026
  • Cover now finds private info in far more scanned and photographed PDFs, including watermarked scans, garbled-font scans, and pasted-in screenshots. It also reads more inside them, like all-caps names and the account numbers along the bottom of a check.
  • When you ask Claude Desktop to redact a file, you can now say which folder it's in ("the 1099 in Downloads") and Cover finds it right away.
  • Redaction covers only what's private: black-and-white scans no longer black out the whole page, sideways pages redact the right spot, and a box no longer stretches across a whole line.
  • Redaction bars are now fully solid, with no faint see-through on any file.
  • The redacted-terms list opens on the right by default, so you can review what was removed at a glance.
  • Clears private text a PDF can hide in its invisible screen-reader layer.
0.14.1June 28, 2026
  • This release is all engine improvements. Cover now catches more kinds of ID numbers: Medicare, Social Security claim, loan and mortgage, and account, member, invoice, employee, and medical-record numbers.
  • Now recognizes driver's license numbers even when a form labels them just "Lic." (like a second driver on an insurance page).
  • Better at catching names and Social Security numbers packed into form fields and tables, such as tax forms.
  • No longer redacts a company's own address in the letterhead (your bank, hospital, or utility), so your files stay readable.
0.14.0June 25, 2026
  • Click the arrow next to Save and pick "Save with report." Cover saves a clean redaction certificate beside your PDF (plus a spreadsheet log or court-style index if you want them) that lists what was removed, by type and page, without ever showing the private values. It's the proof a judge, client, or auditor needs that the file was properly redacted.
  • The right sidebar now lists every redacted term in your document (names, Social Security numbers, addresses, and more), grouped by value. Click any entry to turn its redaction on or off across the whole document at once, so it's quick to review and adjust exactly what's hidden.vh-terms-list
0.13.8June 24, 2026
  • If you installed an earlier version (back when the app was called Bleep or Redact), Cover now fixes its own name in Finder and the Dock automatically, so you won't see the old name lingering after an update.
0.13.7June 23, 2026
  • The app is now called Cover. It's the same tool with the same one-drop redaction, just under a new name. Opening a file from Shortcuts, Siri, or Spotlight uses the Cover name now too.
0.13.6June 20, 2026
  • Cover now teams up with Claude Desktop. One click in Settings connects them, so you can hand Claude a document and it works only with a safely redacted copy. Cover does the redacting right here on your Mac, so Claude never sees the private parts.
  • On first launch, Cover now offers to move itself into your Applications folder. Keeping it there is what lets automatic updates install cleanly, so future updates won't get blocked.
0.13.5June 19, 2026
  • Image-only PDFs that contain nothing private now open straight into the editor instead of getting stuck on the loading screen.
0.13.4June 16, 2026
  • Cover now keeps itself up to date. When a new version is ready it arrives on its own, so you never have to download and swap out the app by hand again.
  • Undo and redo now work while you edit. Press ⌘Z to undo and ⇧⌘Z to redo, so a change you didn't mean to make is easy to take back.
0.13.3June 15, 2026
  • Catches dates of birth even when a form doesn't label them, including ones written out like "born on March 4, 1985." This strengthens coverage of the federal court-filing privacy rule (Fed. R. Civ. P. 5.2).
  • Now finds insurance and medical IDs, including policy, member, subscriber, and Medicare numbers.
  • Catches mailing addresses even when a document spaces the words in unusual ways.
  • More precise on bills: a placeholder account number no longer pulls unrelated list numbers or section references into a box.
0.13.2June 15, 2026
  • Fixes a case where documents carrying multilingual language-assistance notices (such as Medicare statements) could fail to produce a redacted copy.
  • Editor redactions are now verified before saving: the app confirms the text under each box is actually removed, not just covered, and refuses to save if anything survives underneath.
  • Redacted PDFs from forms open cleanly in strict PDF viewers and tools, instead of triggering missing-object errors.
  • Batches are sturdier: if one file hits a problem the rest keep going, and a file that fails partway is never left half-finished.
0.13.1June 12, 2026
  • Cleaner, simpler editor toolbar, and the redacted file's name now shows right at the top so it's always clear what you're saving.
  • Sharper on tax forms: better at picking the right address fields across different IRS forms (1099s vs. 1040s), so it covers what matters and leaves boilerplate alone.
  • Redacted PDFs are tidier on the inside, so they open cleanly in any PDF app, viewer, or tool.
0.13.0June 12, 2026
  • A major under-the-hood rebuild: Cover now runs on its own self-contained PDF engine. It starts faster, takes less space, and stands entirely on its own.
0.12.15June 12, 2026
  • More thorough on form-based documents: redacted information is fully removed rather than just covered.
  • Fewer unnecessary redactions over text that isn't actually private.
0.12.14June 11, 2026
  • Handles more document types well: rotated tables, password-protected and encrypted PDFs, and forms with unusual text layouts.
  • Now recognizes spelled-out U.S. state names as part of an address.
  • More reliable across a range of bank and brokerage statements.

Preferences · ⌘,

Two settings worth knowing.

Hide animations. Skip the redaction effects, and the finished result appears right away.
AI Assistants (MCP). Cover runs a local MCP server (Model Context Protocol), so an MCP-capable assistant (Claude Desktop today) can redact PDFs for you on request. You pick which folders it may reach; anything else is refused. Still fully local, nothing uploaded.
For your IT, legal, or compliance team

Built for reviewers who need defensible output, not a black rectangle with the text still live underneath. What it detects, how it removes it, and where it maps to the standards you check.

Two behaviors reviewers tend to care about most. First, every save is self-verified: Cover re-reads the finished file and confirms the removed text is byte-absent, including compressed data and leftover file history, or it refuses to save. Second, every save can include a redaction certificate and log, a page-by-page record of what was removed and which checks the file passed.

PII it detects & removes

Automatically, across body text, hidden form fields, and scanned images:

  • Names
  • Social Security numbers (incl. pre-masked)
  • ITIN & EIN tax IDs
  • Bank account & routing numbers (incl. international IBAN)
  • Credit / debit card numbers (PAN)
  • Mailing addresses
  • Dates of birth (incl. unlabeled)
  • Insurance & medical IDs (policy, member, Medicare)
  • Labeled account IDs (member, invoice, loan, employee, medical-record)
  • Phone numbers
  • Email addresses
  • Driver's license numbers
  • National IDs (UK NINO, France NIR, India PAN, Italy Codice Fiscale, Mexico RFC & CURP)
  • Vehicle IDs (VIN)
  • Signatures (vector & raster)
  • Case / docket / claim numbers

True removal, not masking

  • Text is deleted, not covered. Redacted characters are stripped from the page content stream, so they can't be selected, copied, searched, or extracted from the file.
  • Form data cleared at the source. Hidden AcroForm field values behind 1099/W-2 boxes are wiped, not just visually masked.
  • Metadata stripped. Document info and XMP metadata are removed, and embedded digital signatures are dropped.
  • Filename sanitized. PII in the filename is cleaned, so the copy saves as name-redacted.pdf.
  • Scans handled in the image. Pictures of paper are OCR’d, then redacted in the rasterized page so nothing survives underneath.
  • Verified before it’s written. Every redacted page is re-extracted and byte-scanned; if a removed value is still present, the file is rejected rather than saved.

Standards

StandardWhat Cover does
NSA/CSS PDF redactionHidden content and metadata cleared
Fed. R. Civ. P. 5.2 / 49.1Helps filers meet the personal-identifier rules: SSNs, tax IDs, birth dates, financial accounts
HIPAA Safe Harbor (45 CFR §164.514)Safe Harbor identifier categories covered
PCI-DSS Requirement 3Card numbers (PAN) fully redacted
GDPR Arts. 4, 28, 44–49Redacted output, processed fully on-device, no third-party processor involved
NIST SP 800-171 / CMMC Level 2Fully offline, no network egress
NARA FOIA processingOCR runs on scans before redaction
EDRM / SedonaRedaction certificate & per-run log (Enterprise tier)
SOC 2Designed to support your organization’s confidentiality controls (CC6.1 / C1.2)

Not in scope: per-redaction FOIA exemption codes, native e-discovery load files (Relativity, Concordance).