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What is Sandboxie and how is it different than other solutions?

Think of your PC as a piece of paper. Every program you run writes on the paper. When you run your browser, it writes on the paper about every site you visited. And any malware you come across will usually try to write itself into the paper.

Traditional privacy and anti-malware software try to locate and erase any writings they think you wouldn't want on the paper. Most of the times they get it right. But first the makers of these solutions must teach the solution what to look for on the paper, and also how to erase it safely.

On the other hand, the Sandboxie sandbox works like a transparency layer placed over the paper. Programs write on the transparency layer and to them it looks like the real paper. When you delete the sandbox, it's like removing the transparency layer, the unchanged, real paper is revealed.

Thanks to esalkin for the paper metaphore. Thanks to warwagon for the graphics.

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How safe would I be, by using Sandboxie?

You would be quite safe using Sandboxie. It should be noted that, from time to time, people are able to find some vulnerability in Sandboxie, an open hole through which malicious software can still infiltrate the system.

This is extremely rare and is quickly resolved by closing the hole that is the attack vector.

Thus it's a good idea to have more traditional anti-malware software. This is is the subject of the following question.

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Do I need other solutions if I use Sandboxie?

Sandboxie may be your first line of defense, but it should certainly be complemented by the more traditional anti-virus and anti-malware solutions. These solutions can let you know if your system does become infected in any way.

Typically, those other solutions employ various forms of pattern matching to discover malicious software and other threats. Sandboxie, on the other hand, quite simply does not trust any software code enough to let it out of the sandbox.

The combination of the two approaches should keep malicious software -- which is serving the interest of other unknown parties -- out of your computer.

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What kinds of programs can I run using Sandboxie?

You should be able to run most applications sandboxed.

Major Web browsers (Microsoft Edge is not supported at this time)

Mail and news readers

instant messengers and chat clients

peer-to-peer networking

Office Suites (Libre Office, OpenOffice) (Support for MS Office 2016/Office365 is offered for the paid version)

Most games in particular, online games which download extension software code


In all cases on this list, your client-side program is exposed to remote software code, which could use the program as a channel to infiltrate your system. By running the program sandboxed, you greatly increase the control you have over that channel.

And in addition, you can even install some applications into the sandbox.

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What are the requirements to run Sandboxie?

Sandboxie works on

Windows XP SP3 (Up until Sandboxie 5.22 )

Windows 7 (32/64)

Windows 8.1 (32/64)

Windows 10 (32/64)(Edge browser & Metro(tile) Apps not supported)

Windows 10 Insider Preview (Fast Ring) supported in Beta builds that are released in the User Forum

There is some support for older 64-bit versions of Windows: see the download page.

Supported Web Browsers (32 & 64 bit supported)

Firefox

Google Chrome

Opera

Cyberfox

SeaMonkey

Vivaldi

Internet Explorer 8, 9, 10 & 11

Waterfox

Nightly Builds of FF

Chromium

And many others!

Sandboxie does not work on...

Windows XP x64 bit

Windows 95, 98 or ME

Mac or Linux operating systems.

Sandboxie should not be installed on Microsoft Server Operating Systems as it's not directly supported. However, we have many users that have deployed it successfully.

You can run Sandboxie in a VM Environment (VMWare, VirtualBox, Apple BootCamp, etc.)

There are no particular hardware requirements to run Sandboxie. However, we do no test on touchscreen devices (many users have successfully installed Sandboxie on Surface pro and similar devices).

Sandboxie needs only a small amount of memory and should have a very small impact