[[!meta title="Converting dangerous documents to safe PDFs using Dangerzone"]]

When you receive untrusted documents, for example, email attachments, *[Dangerzone](https://dangerzone.rocks/)* allows you to convert them into safe PDFs before opening.

*Dangerzone* is particularly useful for journalists who might receive dangerous
documents from anonymous sources or download them from the Internet.

<p><i>Dangerzone</i> is created by <a href="https://freedom.press/">Freedom of
the Press Foundation</a>, a nonprofit that protects public-interest
journalism. Edward Snowden and Laura Poitras are on its Board of Directors.</p>

You can install *Dangerzone* in Tails using the [[Additional Software|additional_software]] feature.

We are not including *Dangerzone* in Tails only because it would be too big (over 1 GB), but we highly recommend it.

Learn more about [how *Dangerzone* works](https://dangerzone.rocks/about/).

Supported formats

*Dangerzone* works on many file formats, including:

Differences between *Dangerzone* and *Metadata Cleaner*

Tails also includes [[*Metadata Cleaner*|doc/sensitive_documents/metadata]] to clean files, but the use cases for *Dangerzone* and *Metadata Cleaner* are very different.

We recommend that you use:

*Metadata Cleaner* to [[remove metadata from your files|doc/sensitive_documents/metadata]] before you publish or share them.

<table>
<tr><th></th><th class="w30"><span class="application">Dangerzone</span></th><th class="w30"><span class="application">Metadata Cleaner</span></th></tr>
<tr><td>Safe to use on</td><td>Other people's files</td><td>Your files only</td></tr>
<tr><td>Clean audio and video files</td><td class="cross">No</td><td class="check">Yes</td></tr>
<tr><td>Remove malware and trackers</td><td class="check">Yes</td><td class="cross">No</td></tr>
<tr><td>Remove visual metadata and fingerprints ¹</td><td class="cross">No</td><td class="cross">No</td></tr>
<tr><td>Allow selecting text in generated PDFs</td><td class="check">Yes</td><td class="cross">No</td></tr>
<tr><td>Speed</td><td class="cross">Slower</td><td class="check">Faster</td></tr>
<tr><td>Included in Tails by default</td><td class="cross">No</td><td class="check">Yes</td></tr>
</table>

1. For example [[!wikipedia Machine Identification Code desc="printer tracking
dots"]], printing imperfections, or intentional misspellings

System requirements

*Dangerzone* requires a lot of memory in the computer and space in your
Persistent Storage because it relies on [[!wikipedia Containerization
(computing) desc="software containers"]] to manipulate dangerous files
securely.

To install *Dangerzone*, you need at least:

Installing *Dangerzone*

To install *Dangerzone* as additional software in Tails, you have to: