What it does
Dangerzone converts PDFs, office files, and images into reconstructed PDFs. Its documented process renders pages into pixels in an isolated environment and builds a new PDF from that representation.
Choose the documents, review the output folder, original-file handling and OCR language, then convert. The current guide defaults to a -safe.pdf copy and moves originals into an unsafe subfolder. OCR can add a searchable text layer, but links, forms and embedded scripts are removed because every page is rebuilt from pixels. Check that the result contains the expected pages. Windows/Mac use a conversion VM; slim Linux packages fetch the conversion environment separately. This describes the design and workflow, not a security test.
Strengths
- Provides a dedicated document-sanitization conversion workflow.
Watch out for
- Reconstructed PDFs lose original links, forms and embedded scripts.
Best for
- Producing a reconstructed reading copy of an untrusted attachment
Sources
- Dangerzone: Convert potentially dangerous documents into safe PDFs (Oct 26, 2026)
- Dangerzone: convert your first document (Oct 26, 2026)