Small law firms and solo practitioners
Redact court filings, discovery, and client documents on your own machine, with no IT department required.
Windows desktop redaction
Philter Desktop
Redact PII from documents on your own Windows computer. Philter Desktop can redact PDF, Word, Excel, text, and email files, including scanned PDFs. Nothing is uploaded, and no service has to be running.
Buying more than one license? Contact us for discounts.
Redacts
- DOCX
- XLSX
- CSV
- TXT
- RTF
- EML
- MSG
See what gets redacted
The same document before and after Philter Desktop: sensitive details are detected and blacked out, while the rest of the document stays intact.
Illustrative example using synthetic data, not real personal information. Detection is configurable and probabilistic; review redacted output against your own documents.
See Philter Desktop in action
Who Philter Desktop is for
Philter Desktop brings the Philterd redaction toolkit to a single Windows computer, for small law firms, solo practitioners, and business users who need to redact sensitive documents without sending them to a cloud service.
Small practices handling sensitive records
Clinics, accountants, and advisors who need to scrub PII and PHI from documents without sending them to a cloud service.
Compliance and records teams
Compliance officers and records staff who redact PII from documents before releasing them for audits, public-records requests, or sharing, all on their own machine.
What Philter Desktop does
A native, open-source Windows app
Install and run it like any Windows program — no server, command line, or cloud account. It is open source under the Apache license, so your IT team can audit exactly what it does and confirm your documents stay local.
Every format — even scanned PDFs
Redacts PDF, Word (.docx), Excel (.xlsx) and CSV, plain text (.txt), rich text (.rtf), and email (.eml and .msg). Image-only scanned PDFs are read with on-device OCR, so text baked into a scan can be redacted too.
Context-aware, configurable detection
A bundled on-device AI model finds person names in context, while configurable detectors look for Social Security and account numbers, emails, phone numbers, dates, and your own custom terms. Start from a ready-made policy or tailor your own.
Review and verify before you share
Preview exactly what will be redacted and adjust it before saving. Philter Desktop can re-scan the finished file to help catch anything missed, and produce a report or a JSON explanation of every change for your records.
Removes hidden data, not just text
Strips Office metadata, comments, tracked changes, and hidden text, and removes identifying email headers such as the originating IP address and mail client — the hidden data ordinary redaction leaves behind.
Automate it across folders
Point Philter Desktop at a folder and new files are redacted automatically, with it running quietly in the system tray. A command line and a Windows Explorer right-click action handle batch and one-off jobs.
Pricing
Personal & evaluation
Free
For individual, non-commercial, and evaluation use.
- The same official signed build, with full on-device redaction
- Works fully offline, with no uploads
- Community support on GitHub
Commercial
$100 USDper user / year
For business and other commercial use.
- Everything in the free version, for commercial use
- Direct support from the creator of Philter Desktop
- Official updates, maintenance releases, and upgrades throughout your subscription term
- Commercial use of the official build under the Philterd Commercial License Agreement
Buying more than one license? Contact us for discounts.
Every document is redacted on your computer, and nowhere else.
Philter Desktop opens, analyzes, and redacts each file locally on your own Windows computer. There is no cloud service, no server, and no network call at any step. Your documents, both the originals and the redacted copies, never leave the device, and it runs with no internet connection at all. We cannot see your files, because they are never sent anywhere.
- 100% on-device: detection and redaction run on your computer
- No uploads, no cloud, no servers, no network calls
- Works fully offline, with no internet connection
- Your documents never leave your computer
Frequently asked questions
Do my documents leave my computer?
No. Detection and redaction run entirely on your Windows computer, with no outbound network calls. It works with no internet connection. This is the point of a desktop tool for privileged and regulated documents.
Is Philter Desktop open source?
The application and the bundled PII model are open source under the Apache license, like the rest of the Philterd toolkit, so you can audit exactly what they do and build and run them yourself for free. The $100 USD per user per year covers commercial use of the official signed build and support, governed by the Philterd Commercial License Agreement. Personal and evaluation use of the official build is free.
What file types does it redact?
PDF, Microsoft Word documents (.docx), plain text (.txt), rich text (.rtf), spreadsheets (.csv and .xlsx), and email files (.eml and .msg). Scanned, image-only PDFs are read with on-device OCR so they can be redacted too, though OCR is best-effort and can miss low-quality scans or handwriting, so a quick review is worthwhile.
Can I control what gets redacted?
Philter Desktop uses the same configurable policy engine as Philter, so you decide which entity types to redact and how, and you can add your own terms and rules.
How do I know the redaction worked?
Because you inspect it yourself. Philter Desktop writes a redacted copy for you to open and visually review, page by page, before you share it. Files are named with a "_redacted-draft" suffix as a reminder to check, and a side-by-side before-and-after view makes the review quick. No automated tool is perfect, so your own look at the output is the final confirmation.
Is the redaction permanent?
Redaction always writes a new copy and never changes your original. For PDFs the page is flattened to an image, so there is no live text or hidden object left under the redaction boxes to recover; for the other formats the underlying content is replaced, not merely covered.
How do I get support?
Direct support from the team that builds the toolkit is included with a commercial license. See the support page for how to reach us, and keep your receipt handy as proof of entitlement when you get in touch.
What do I get, and what happens after I purchase?
Nothing about the software changes for paying customers. You run the same official signed build as everyone else; there is no separate paid download, and there are no license keys or activation to enter. Your purchase entitles you to commercial use and to direct support from the team that builds it. Keep your receipt as proof of entitlement when you contact support. See our Refund and Cancellation Policy for refunds and cancellations.
Need offline redaction for your firm?
Whether you want to download Philter Desktop and get started or scope a larger offline redaction deployment, you can work directly with the team that builds the toolkit. Contact us about what you are redacting and we will help.