Censor chosen words in text with asterisks or a label

How to use the word censor

1. Paste your text into Your text.
2. Type the words to hide in Words to censor, one per line or comma-separated.
3. Pick a Mask style: All letters (****), Keep first letter (d***), Keep first and last (d**n) or [censored].
4. Change the Mask character if you want # or • instead of *.
5. Leave Whole words only ticked unless you want parts of longer words masked as well. Then copy the result.

What it does and when to use it

The tool replaces words you choose with a mask so the text can be shared more widely. Common uses:

• Family-friendly copies. Clean up quotes, song requests or chat logs for a school, a stream overlay or a work newsletter.
• Redacting names. Mask names, client codes or product names in a document before sharing an example. The # mask makes it obvious something was removed.
• Spoiler control. Hide character names or plot words in a review.
• Teaching. Show a text with key terms hidden for a fill-in-the-blank exercise.

To replace words with other words instead of masks, use find and replace. To see how often a word appears before you hide it, use count occurrences or word frequency.

How it works

Your list is split at line breaks and commas, trimmed, and sorted longest first. The tool then searches the text, ignoring case. With Whole words only, a match counts only when no letter, digit or underscore touches it on either side. Each match is replaced by the chosen style:

• All letters puts one mask character for every character of the match.
• Keep first letter keeps the first character and masks the rest.
• Keep first and last keeps both ends. Words of one or two letters keep only the first.
• [censored] replaces the whole match with that label.

Only the first character of the Mask character box is used. Everything runs in your browser.

Worked examples

These outputs come from the tool’s own function.

Default settings. With the list “darn” and “heck”, “Well, darn it. What the heck is going on? Darn!” becomes Well, **** it. What the **** is going on? ****!. The capital D was matched too.

Whole words only. “darn darned” with Keep first letter gives d*** darned. With Whole words only off and Keep first and last, it gives d**n d**ned.

Redacting. “Send the password to Bob” with the list “password, Bob” and # as the mask gives Send the ######## to ###.

Limits and tips

• The tool does not report how many words it masked.
• Plurals and other forms are separate words. Add “darns” to the list as well, or untick Whole words only.