A simple, secure, client-side PWA for anonymizing WhatsApp chat exports before sharing with AI models or others.

Redactly parses WhatsApp .txt export files entirely in the browser — no server, no uploads, no data leaves your device. You can anonymize participant names, filter conversations by date, and export the cleaned text in seconds.

• Upload or Paste — Drop a WhatsApp .txt export or paste raw chat text directly
• Auto-detect Participants — Identifies all unique senders from the chat
• Name Aliases — Assign anonymous aliases (e.g. "User A") to each participant
• Aggressive Redaction — Optionally redact name fragments inside message text
• Manual Participant Addition — When aggressive redaction is on, add names that may appear in messages but weren't parsed as senders
• PII Filters — Optional per-category masking of emails ([EMAIL]), URLs ([LINK]), phone numbers ([PHONE])
• NSFW Filter — Heuristic content filter so downstream LLMs accept the chat. Three tiers (general profanity / slurs / graphic violence), leetspeak-aware, user-extensible word list and allowlist. Mask or soften strategies.
• Date Filtering — Trim the conversation to a specific date range
• Export — Copy to clipboard or download as a .txt file
• Save to History — Save redacted chats locally for later access
• Name Mappings — Persist your aliases across sessions for repeated contacts
• Feedback — Submit feedback or star reviews directly from the app
• PWA — Works offline after first visit; installable on desktop and mobile
• Dark Mode — Built-in light/dark theme toggle
• Off-thread Processing — Parsing and redaction run in a Web Worker so the UI stays responsive on large chats

• React 19 — UI library
• TypeScript — Type safety
• Vite — Build tool and dev server
• Tailwind CSS v4 — Utility-first styling
• Framer Motion — Animations
• Zustand — Persistent app settings (theme, date format, name mappings)
• IndexedDB — Local chat history storage
• vite-plugin-pwa — Service worker and PWA manifest

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Start dev server
npm run dev

Visit http://localhost:5173.

# Build for production
npm run build

# Preview production build
npm run preview

# Lint
npm run lint

• English-only seed list. Other languages will pass through; add custom terms via the Additional words to redact field.
• Source: the general tier is bundled from Shutterstock LDNOOBW (MIT) at build time; refresh with pnpm gen:wordlist. Slurs and violence tiers are curated.
• Heuristic. Always review the preview before sharing — false positives (e.g. Scunthorpe) and false negatives are possible. Use the Allowlist field to whitelist anything the filter overshoots.
• Build-time only wordlist refresh: the PWA never fetches anything at runtime, preserving the offline + privacy guarantees.

Chat parsing, redaction, and storage are 100% client-side. No chat data leaves your device.

The only outbound traffic from this app:

• Loading static assets (HTML, JS, CSS, fonts) on first visit.
• Submitting the optional Feedback form (you choose what to type and click Send).
• Anonymous, cookieless usage stats via GoatCounter — opt-in only, off by default, honors Do Not Track. Tracks: page visits + which features you toggled. Never tracks: chat content, names, aliases, file sizes, message counts, search queries. Disable any time from Settings → Anonymous Usage Stats.

1. Sign up at goatcounter.com (free for non-commercial use).
2. Recommended: spin up a dedicated site for Redactly so events don't mix with other projects under the same account. From your main dashboard go to Settings → Sites → Add site and set the code to redactly. Your endpoint becomes https://redactly.goatcounter.com/count and the dashboard at https://redactly.goatcounter.com.
3. Free tier allows up to 6 additional sites per account. Each has its own code, dashboard, and counters.

Copy .env.example to .env.local:

VITE_GOATCOUNTER_CODE=redactly   # subdomain part of redactly.goatcounter.com

Leave empty to disable the analytics feature entirely (the script will never load, regardless of user consent).

The deploy workflow (.github/workflows/deploy.yml) writes .env.production.local from a repository secret before running pnpm build:

Add it under Settings → Secrets and variables → Actions → New repository secret.

MIT