VaultView
A privacy-first Android document viewer designed for journalists, lawyers, and activists who need to read sensitive PDFs, contracts, and source files on their phone without any app phoning home or holding storage permissions.
Journalists, human-rights lawyers, and activists handling sensitive documents on personal Android phones
- Zero-permission file viewing using Android's Storage Access Framework so nothing is persisted beyond what you opened
- On-device redaction tool that blacks out names, faces, or metadata before you share a screenshot
- Case file vault with PIN + biometric unlock, auto-wiped after a configurable idle timeout
- Forensic-friendly: every action stays on-device, with a 'clean exit' that clears recent files, cache, and thumbnails
A zero-permission Android file viewer just hit HN with strong traction, signaling real demand from people burned by document apps that exfiltrate to cloud services — exactly the threat model journalists and lawyers face.
User cited the HN post at 91 points / 45 comments but the actual Show HN only reached ~29 points / 12 comments; Gander GitHub sits at 131 stars / 1 fork — modest but real privacy-community interest, not viral.Hacker News => Show HN: Gander, an Android file viewer that asks for no permissions at all ↗GitHub - mokshablr/gander ↗
Crowded for the narrow no-permission PDF niche: GrapheneOS ships its own PDF Viewer, TNM Privacy PDF Viewer is on Play Store, Veloxity exists, and Gander itself is open source — VaultView would compete with multiple existing apps.Secure PDF Viewer - Apps on Google Play (GrapheneOS) ↗TNM Privacy PDF Viewer - Apps on Google Play ↗Veloxity — Privacy-First Mobile Apps for Android ↗
Reference products are free/open source (Gander MIT, GrapheneOS PDF Viewer free) and the target persona refuses telemetry and ad-supported models; paid alternatives struggle to extract revenue from this audience.GitHub - mokshablr/gander (MIT, free) ↗PDF Reader That Is The Best For User Privacy? (PrivacyGuides forum) ↗
Threat model is structural and growing: Amnesty documents ongoing Pegasus targeting of journalists/activists/serbian civil society, with NSO-grade spyware remaining a sustained risk that keeps demand alive.PDF JOURNALISTS TARGETED WITH PEGASUS SPYWARE - Amnesty International ↗Inside Pegasus: The evolution of the world's most notorious spyware (Amnesty Security Lab) ↗
Technically proven but non-trivial: requires sandboxed WebView asset loaders, Pdfium/SheetJS/PPTXjs renderers, Storage Access Framework, no INTERNET permission — Gander's README shows a multi-component build (~15 MB APK, Android 8+).GitHub - mokshablr/gander (architecture and build details) ↗