# freedomofpress/dangerzone

Take potentially dangerous PDFs, office documents, or images and convert them to safe PDFs

Repository: https://github.com/freedomofpress/dangerzone
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/dangerzone
Homepage: https://dangerzone.rocks
Language: Python
License: AGPL-3.0
License Family: copyleft
Last push: 2026-08-26T14:48:59+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 88/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 67, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 2431, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 62, "gap_med": 98.5, "n_releases_24m": 7}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 5715, forks 267 (observed 2026-08-28T04:09:28.190125+00:00)

## What it is
Dangerzone is a desktop application from Freedom of the Press Foundation that converts untrusted documents (PDFs, office files, images) into safe PDFs by rendering them to pixels inside a network-isolated sandbox and rebuilding the PDF locally. It supports optional OCR and compression, and runs on macOS, Windows, Linux, Qubes OS, and Tails.

## Use cases
- safely open suspicious email attachments
- convert untrusted PDFs to safe PDFs
- sanitize office documents before opening
- remove malware and trackers from documents
- OCR scanned documents after sanitization
- open leaked documents without risking compromise

## When to choose
- you must open documents from untrusted sources like journalists or activists do
- you want sandboxed, network-isolated document conversion
- you need a cross-platform tool that works on Qubes OS or Tails
- you want optional OCR and PDF compression built in

## When to avoid
- you need to preserve the original document's formatting, metadata, or interactivity
- you need to edit documents rather than just read them safely
- you need conversion of formats outside its supported list
- you need a headless server-side bulk conversion pipeline

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: active
- function: security, pdf, ocr, gui, cli
- domain: security, privacy, files, pdf, developer-tools
- platform: windows, cross-platform
- tags: document-sanitization, malware-defense, sandboxed-conversion, safe-pdf, journalist-security, gvisor, qubes-os, tails, sandboxing, macos, linux, docker

## Member repositories
- freedomofpress/dangerzone (main) score 88

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:28.190125+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 2026-08-29T17:53:29.174451+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/freedomofpress/dangerzone (fetched 2026-08-28T04:09:28.190125+00:00, sha 61ca8ba88211)
  - homepage: https://dangerzone.rocks (fetched 2026-08-29T08:49:04.859551+00:00, sha 0c2da2142b8f)
  - site_page: https://dangerzone.rocks/about (fetched 2026-08-29T08:49:04.865297+00:00, sha c1372ad68d88)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.