AI Face Blur & Bokeh

Protect identities with AI-powered face blur or create professional bokeh portrait effects — all processed locally in your browser

Effect Mode

Choose Photo

JPEG, PNG, or WebP — up to 20 MB

100% browser processing — the AI model runs locally via WebAssembly. Your photos never leave your device.

Why PrivaFace?

AI Face Detection

Powered by Google MediaPipe BlazeFace, which accurately detects multiple faces simultaneously — including partial faces, faces at angles, and small faces in group photos.

Privacy First

All processing happens in your browser using WebAssembly — photos are never uploaded to any server at any point.

Artistic Effects

Choose gaussian blur for smooth natural softening, pixelation for mosaic-style anonymization, or bokeh for beautiful portrait-mode background blur — all with adjustable intensity.

What is PrivaFace?

PrivaFace is a free, browser-based AI tool that automatically detects and blurs faces in photos to protect personal privacy. People reach for it before posting a group shot from a party, an event or protest crowd, a classroom or office picture, or a street photo where bystanders never agreed to be online — anywhere you want to anonymize the people you didn't mean to share. The AI finds every face, including partially hidden ones and faces at an angle, and you can blur them with a smooth gaussian softening or a hard pixelated mosaic, dialing the intensity with a slider and toggling individual faces on or off. It also offers a background bokeh mode that keeps the main subject sharp and blurs everything behind them for a professional portrait look. PrivaFace accepts JPEG, PNG, and WebP images and exports a high-quality PNG or WebP. All detection and blurring happens entirely in your browser using Google's MediaPipe BlazeFace model running via WebAssembly — there is no installation, no sign-up, and no account, and your photos are never uploaded to any server. The only thing the page fetches from the network is the small face-detection model itself, downloaded once; after that, your images never leave your device.

How to Use PrivaFace (3 Steps)

  1. 1

    Upload Your Photo

    Select a photo (JPEG, PNG, or WebP format) and choose your processing mode: face blur to anonymize detected faces, or background bokeh to apply a portrait-style depth-of-field effect that blurs everything except the main subject.

  2. 2

    Adjust Settings

    The AI automatically detects all faces in the image, including partially visible faces and those at angles. Review the detections, adjust blur type (gaussian or pixelate) and intensity with the slider, toggle individual detections on or off, and preview the result in real time.

  3. 3

    Download Result

    Download your processed photo as a high-quality PNG or WebP file. All face detection and blurring was performed locally in your browser — the original photo and the result never leave your device.

Why Browser-Based Face Blur Is Safer

Most face-blur tools and privacy apps upload your photos to cloud servers where the AI runs on their infrastructure — meaning your personal images, including recognizable faces, are transmitted to a third party and may be stored, analyzed, or exposed in a breach. Faces are among the most sensitive biometric data there is, so this is exactly the wrong thing to hand to a stranger's server. PrivaFace runs the entire MediaPipe BlazeFace model locally in your browser using WebAssembly, so your photos never leave your device during detection, blurring, or export. Because the model runs client-side, you don't have to take this on trust: open your browser's DevTools Network tab while you process a photo and you will see your image is never uploaded — the only network request is the one-time download of the small face-detection model when the page first loads. For even clearer proof, switch off your Wi-Fi after that initial load and the tool keeps detecting and blurring faces normally, because nothing was ever going to a server in the first place.

Frequently Asked Questions

PrivaFace uses Google MediaPipe's BlazeFace model — one of the most accurate lightweight face detectors available. It is specifically optimized for browser-based inference using WebAssembly and can detect multiple faces simultaneously, including partially visible faces and faces at various angles.
Face blur mode uses AI to detect all faces in the photo and applies blur only to those regions, leaving the rest of the image untouched — ideal for protecting identities in group photos or crowd scenes. Bokeh mode detects the main subject (typically a person) and blurs the background instead, creating a professional portrait effect that mimics a shallow depth-of-field lens.
Yes. Face blur mode offers two blurring styles: gaussian blur for smooth, natural softening; and pixelation (mosaic-style) for a distinct anonymization effect. You can also adjust the blur intensity with a slider to find the right balance between anonymization strength and natural appearance.
Yes. PrivaFace runs entirely in your browser using WebAssembly, so it works on any modern browser including mobile Safari on iPhone and Chrome on Android. Touch controls work for manual adjustments on mobile screens.
Yes. PrivaFace is completely free with no account required, no watermarks added, and no usage limits. All face detection and blurring runs locally in your browser using the MediaPipe WebAssembly model, so your photos never leave your device at any point.
Everything happens on your own device, inside your browser. PrivaFace downloads the small MediaPipe face-detection model once when the page first loads; after that, all detection, blurring, and export run entirely on your device with no further network connection, so you can keep using it with Wi-Fi switched off. Your photo itself is never uploaded — you can confirm this by opening your browser's DevTools Network tab while you work, or by disconnecting from the internet after the page loads and watching the tool still detect and blur faces normally.
Yes, the blur is permanent and irreversible in the exported file. PrivaFace redraws the blurred or pixelated regions directly into the image pixels and renders a brand-new PNG or WebP, so the original face information is genuinely gone from the file you download — it cannot be recovered or sharpened back, even with software, because there is no hidden original layer underneath. Your source photo on your device stays untouched, so you always keep the unedited original for yourself. Note that face detection is automatic, so before you export it's worth checking that every face you wanted hidden is selected.

Related reading

Face Privacy: Protecting Your Identity Online