Original author(s) Development status Active | Developer(s) Sophos | |
Initial release June 26, 2004; 12 years ago (2004-06-26) Stable release 5.16 / December 16, 2016; 3 months ago (2016-12-16) Preview release 5.17.5 / March 6, 2017; 13 days ago (2017-03-06) | ||
Sandboxie is a sandbox-based isolation program developed by Sophos (which acquired it from Invincea which acquired it earlier from the original author Ronen Tzur), for 32- and 64-bit Windows NT-based operating systems. It creates a sandbox-like isolated operating environment in which applications can be run or installed without permanently modifying the local or mapped drive. An isolated virtual environment allows controlled testing of untrusted programs and web surfing.
Contents
History
In December 2013, Invincea announced the acquisition of Sandboxie. The original developer Ronen Tzur further announced he will no longer be involved with the program.
In February 2017, Sophos announced the acquisition of Invincea. Invincea posted an assurance in Sandboxie's website that for the time being Sandboxie's development and support will continue as normal.
64-bit Windows
As of version 4.02, Sandboxie has full support for 64-bit versions of Windows with the exception of Windows XP 64-bit which was never supported.
License
Sandboxie is released under a proprietary End-User License Agreement (EULA). Home users may continue using Sandboxie for free, without paying to register it; however, two of its functions remain disabled: automatically running programs under Sandboxie, and the simultaneous use of multiple sandboxes. After 30 days, Sandboxie starts with a registration nagware message that the user can dismiss after a 5-second delay.
Reception
Sandboxie was included in Brothersoft's 2010 Editors Pick list.
Gizmo's Freeware gave Sandboxie a rating of 9 out of 10 stars and included it in their Editors' Choice List as the "Best Free Browser Protection Utility".
Softonic has given Sandboxie a rating of 8 out of 10 with Elena Santos stating in her review that "Sandboxie is a handy tool to test untrustworthy software without putting your system in danger."