Face Blur & Pixelate
Find every face in a batch of photos and blur, pixelate or cover it in one go. Small faces in the background are found too, you decide which faces stay visible, and your photos never leave your device.
Runs on your device. Nothing is uploaded.
Effect
Strength scales with each face, so a small face in the background and a close-up get the same amount of cover. Solid colour hides the most; large blocks or strong blur are also hard to undo.
Shape
Detection
Scans the whole photo, then overlapping close-ups at several scales so small, distant faces are found too.
The face detector loads when you add the first photo.
Save
Each photo is saved in its own format (JPG, PNG or WebP; other formats as PNG) as name-blurred. The effect is painted into the pixels, and re-encoding removes EXIF metadata such as GPS location, camera and date.
No file at hand?Photo: U.S. Navy, public domain
How to use the Face Blur & Pixelate
- Drop your photos or a whole folder, paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V, or click to choose files. The face detector loads with the first photo (about 14 MB, once) and then finds faces in every image, one after another.
- Pick an effect: Blur, Pixelate or Solid colour, and set its strength. Choose an ellipse or rectangle for faces, how much room to leave around them and, if you like, a soft edge.
- Review each photo: click an image in the list, then click any face you want to keep visible (it turns dashed). Click it again to cover it.
- Drag on the photo to cover anything the detector missed or that is not a face, such as a number plate, a name badge, a screen or a house number. Drag a drawn area to move it, pull a corner to resize it, press Delete to remove it and Ctrl+Z to undo.
- If faces in the background are missed, raise Sensitivity or set Search for small faces to Thorough. If something that is not a face gets covered, lower Sensitivity or click it to leave it visible.
- Download one photo, or all of them as a ZIP. Each photo keeps its format (JPG, PNG or WebP) and loses its EXIF metadata.
What it does well
Finds the faces at the back of the group. A face detector looks at a photo shrunk to its own small input size, which is why distant faces in group shots are often missed. This tool scans the whole photo, then overlapping sections at several scales, and merges what it finds, so faces only a few dozen pixels wide in a 12-megapixel photo are covered too. Sensitivity can be changed afterwards without scanning again.
You stay in control. Every detected face is outlined; click one to leave it visible, for example your own child in a school photo. Drag to cover anything else, such as a missed face, a car number plate, a name badge, a screen or a document, and undo any step.
Cover that cannot be peeled off. Blur, mosaic and solid colour are painted into the pixels at full resolution and scale with each face, and the files are re-encoded without EXIF or GPS data. Nothing is uploaded and there is no watermark.
Frequently asked questions 8
Are my photos uploaded anywhere?
No. Faces are found by a detection model that runs in your browser, and the blur is painted on your own device. The page loads the model and its WebAssembly runtime from this site the first time you add a photo; your photos, the faces found in them and the areas you draw never leave your device. Your usage history, if you keep one, records only the settings you used, never images, file names or face positions.
How does the automatic face detection work?
It uses Google's MediaPipe BlazeFace full-range model (Apache 2.0 licence), which is built for faces up to about 5 metres from the camera. A single pass over a large group photo shrinks distant faces to a few pixels, so the tool also scans overlapping sections of the photo at several scales, plus a zoomed-out copy for very close faces, and merges the duplicates. Standard looks for faces down to about 40 pixels wide, Thorough down to about 20 pixels.
Which faces can it miss?
Faces turned to the side (profiles), heads seen from behind, faces mostly hidden by masks, hands, hair or sunglasses, very blurry or dark faces, faces upside down, and tiny faces in crowds a long way off. Drawings, statues and posters may be detected as faces or may not. Always look through each photo before you share it, and drag over anything that was missed.
Is blur, pixelate or a solid colour safest?
A solid colour is the only effect that leaves nothing of the face behind, so use it for anything sensitive. Pixelate turns each face into a few large single-colour blocks; small blocks can leave a face recognisable, so keep the block size large. Blur here is not a light Gaussian filter that can be partly reversed: the area is first shrunk so the fine detail is thrown away, then blurred and scaled back up. Strength and block size are set as a share of each face, so a small face in the background is covered as well as a close-up.
Can someone remove the blur from the downloaded file?
No layer or mask is saved: the effect is painted into the pixels and the image is encoded again, so the original face is not in the file. The covered area is fully replaced; a soft edge only fades outwards beyond it. How recognisable a person still is depends on the effect and strength you pick, and on clothes, hair and surroundings that stay visible.
Does it remove EXIF and GPS location data?
Yes. Every photo is encoded again from the pixels, so EXIF metadata such as GPS location, camera model, serial number and the date taken is not copied into the new file. The EXIF rotation is applied first, so phone photos stay upright.
Which formats can I open and save?
It opens JPG, PNG and WebP, plus GIF (first frame), BMP and AVIF where your browser can decode them. JPG photos are saved as JPG, PNG as PNG and WebP as WebP; other formats are saved as PNG. Files get -blurred, -pixelated or -covered added to their name, so they do not overwrite the originals.
Does it add a watermark or limit how many photos I can process?
No watermark, no sign-up and no limit on the number of photos. Large batches simply take longer, because each photo is scanned on your device.
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