# containers/bubblewrap

Low-level unprivileged sandboxing tool used by Flatpak and similar projects

Repository: https://github.com/containers/bubblewrap
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/bubblewrap
Language: C
License: NOASSERTION
License Family: other
Topics: user-namespaces, linux-containers
Last push: 2026-08-26T13:38:54+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 91/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 75, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 3851, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 7, "gap_med": 125, "n_releases_24m": 4}
- flags: no_license
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 8490, forks 375 (observed 2026-08-28T04:10:23.091168+00:00)

## What it is
Bubblewrap is a low-level unprivileged sandboxing tool for Linux that uses user namespaces to let any user run processes in isolated container-like environments. It is the sandboxing engine used by Flatpak and similar projects, though it provides primitives rather than a complete security policy.

## Use cases
- run untrusted applications in a sandbox without root
- isolate a process's filesystem view on Linux
- build a custom sandboxing tool on top of user namespaces
- run containerized commands as an unprivileged user
- restrict what files a program can access during execution

## When to choose
- you need unprivileged sandboxing on Linux without root or setuid
- you are building a higher-level tool like Flatpak that needs a sandbox primitive
- you want to remap or hide parts of the filesystem for a process

## When to avoid
- you want a ready-made sandbox with a predefined security policy
- you need full container orchestration like Docker or Kubernetes
- you need sandboxing on non-Linux platforms

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: active
- function: security, container-runtime, cli
- domain: security, developer-tools, operating-systems
- platform: cli
- tags: sandboxing, user-namespaces, flatpak, unprivileged-containers, isolation, containers, linux

## Member repositories
- containers/bubblewrap (main) score 91

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:23.091168+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:26:49.715826+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/containers/bubblewrap (fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:23.091168+00:00, sha 91a8acc900d7)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.