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Press kit · Updated May 2026
01 · About
What Black Highlighter does.
Two paragraphs. Lift them straight into your piece.
Black Highlighter hides text you don't want to share, in pictures you do. It's a redaction app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac that uses on-device machine learning to find names, emails, account numbers, and anything else in an image, and cover them up with neat black bars.
The redactions are flat pixels in the exported image. Nothing leaves your device. There's no subscription, no account, no cloud. Made by Geoff Pado, an indie developer in Seattle, under the name Cocoatype.
- Developer
- Cocoatype · Geoff Pado
- Released
- May 31, 2017 (iOS) · Feb 8, 2021 (macOS)
- Platforms
- iOS / iPadOS 13.0+ · macOS 11.0+
- Price
- Free to download and use most features.
- $0.99 per month, $4.99 per year, or $19.99 once to unlock advanced features.
- Categories
- Photo & Video · Productivity
- Latest version
- v2025.6 — Sep 22, 2025
02 · Key features
Six things to mention.
The first three ship with the free app. The last three unlock with the in-app purchase.
Free
Magic Highlighter
Snaps to detected text and covers it completely. Bars come out neat and even — and harder to guess at, because letter shapes don't show through.
Free
Color Picker
Use different colors to differentiate redactions — handy for distinguishing speakers in a chat thread.
Free
iOS, iPadOS & macOS
One purchase, three platforms. Edit on whichever device you're on.
Paid
Automatic Redaction
Save a list of words and phrases. Open an image and Black Highlighter finds and hides them for you — every time.
Paid
Workflow Integration
Hooks into Shortcuts on iOS and Automator on macOS so you can pipe images through redaction in larger workflows.
Paid
Document Scanner
Scan a paper document with the same tech that powers Apple Notes — auto-cropped, deskewed, and ready to redact.
All paid features unlock with subscription or one-time in-app purchase.
03 · Screenshots & graphics
Pick your shots.
Click any image to download the full-resolution PNG. Or grab the whole bundle from the top of the page.
04 · Boilerplate
Copy-paste ready.
Pre-approved description blurb. Use it verbatim or as a starting point.
Standard description
Black Highlighter is a redaction app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It uses on-device machine learning to find text in images (such as names, emails, or account numbers) and cover it up with neat black bars. The redactions are flat pixels in the exported image; nothing leaves your device.
Free to download with a one-time in-app purchase or recurring subscription that adds automatic redaction, document scanning, and Shortcuts integration. Made by indie developer Geoff Pado as Cocoatype.
Last updated Jun 21, 2026
Need something else?
Specific screenshot, promo code, interview, or just want to chat? Email hello@cocoatype.com. Geoff usually replies within a day.