Sandboxie Plus 1.17.3 / Classic 5.72.3

Sandboxie offers secure sandboxing for Windows apps, preventing permanent system changes and adding enhanced features in the modern Plus interface.

Razvan Serea News Reporter Neowin · Mar 30, 2026 13:38 EDT with 0 comments

Sandboxie

Run programs in a sandbox to prevent malware from making permanent changes to your PC. Sandboxie allows you to run your browser, or any other program, so that all changes that result from the usage are kept in a sandbox environment, which can then be deleted later.

Sandboxie is a sandbox-based isolation software for 32- and 64-bit Windows NT-based operating systems. It is being developed by David Xanatos since it became open source, before that it was developed by Sophos (which acquired it from Invincea, which acquired it earlier from the original author Ronen Tzur). 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.

Sandboxie is available in two flavors Plus and Classic. Both have the same core components, this means they have the same level of security and compatibility. What's different is the user interface the Plus build has a modern Qt based UI which supports all new features that have been added since the project went open source. The Classic build has the old no longer developed MFC based UI, hence it lacks support for modern features, these features can however still be used when manually configured in the Sandboxie.ini.

Sandboxie Plus 1.17.3 / Classic 5.72.3 release notes:

Added

added configurable window location settings to control which monitor main, non-main, file recovery, and notification windows open on, including a selectable fallback mode. #4536 #5238
Global Settings > Interface Config > Window Options
added "Label only" border mode option (onlbl, ttllbl, alllbl) that hides the colored border frame and shows only the sandbox name (or alias) label #5239
added MIDI workaround template for Windows 11 #5183 #5203 (thanks xsmolasses)
added new tray customization options (Global Settings > Shell Integration > System Tray): #5254
"Show icons in tray context menu" (Options/TrayIcons) — controls whether custom sandbox icons are displayed in the tray menu.
"Show box alias name instead of box name in tray" (Options/TrayUseAlias) — displays the configured alias/display name in both compact and regular tray menus.
"Show sandbox status as tooltip in tray list" (Options/TrayStatusTip) now supports tri-state behavior: unchecked = never, partial = while Ctrl or Shift is held (default), checked = always.
"Show overlay icons for boxes in tray list" (Options/TrayOverlayIcons) — shows the same box-state overlays used in the main sandbox list (no-force, disk image mounted/unmounted, RAM disk, auto-delete) on tray icons in both the compact widget and the regular context menu.
added border capture exclusion via HideBordersFromCapture
keeps border frames and labels out of screenshots and screen recordings; defaults to CoverBoxedWindows
added border label width and taskbar clipping options
configurable via BorderColor label width and BorderExcludeTaskbar
added UseFakeShellDispatch option to provide synthetic IShellDispatch fallback (may fix some WebView2 issues)
can be disabled per process via UseFakeShellDispatch=process,n
added Template_OnScreenKeyboard (Windows 11) to fix On-Screen Keyboard freezes when used with sandboxed programs

Changed

reduced constant GUI CPU usage by caching custom BoxIcon resolution in the sandbox model instead of reloading icon resources on refresh
throttled internet connectivity check in SandMan main timer to once every 60 seconds and cache the result
updater only runs when device has internet connectivity, eliminating wasted network attempts and reducing repeated HKLM\\SYSTEM\\Setup\\SystemSetupInProgress registry checks
changed duplicate sandbox behavior so active box aliases also receive the "Copy" suffix on duplication
changed tray sandbox/group ordering to mirror sandbox list mode (manual / ascending / descending), including group ordering
improved tray/sandbox submenu icon caching by resolving DblClickAction target paths (GetCommandFile) only on cache misses and caching LoadWindowsIcon(path,index) results for Run/Start menu entries, reducing repeated system icon extraction when opening menus
improved border rendering

Fixed

fixed false "Some changes haven't been saved yet" prompt when leaving Network Options with unlisted-process network mode set to non-default
fixed duplicated boxes not preserving the original box group assignment
fixed double-clicking on a group's empty path/command line crash #5253
fixed compact tray box list clipping long sandbox names; width is now measured precisely per item using font metrics and scales correctly at any DPI #5254
fixed WOW64 registry view inheritance for relative key opens in SbieDll, preserving parent KEY_WOW64_32KEY/KEY_WOW64_64KEY semantics across NtOpenKey/NtCreateKey #5171 #5244
fixed handle leak in ScanStartMenu: IShellLinkW and IPersistFile COM interfaces were never released in ResolveShortcut, permanently retaining handles (file, registry, icon) for every .lnk shortcut scanned; replaced raw pointers with CComPtr to ensure Release() on all exit paths
fixed parsing logic for ClosedClsid and ClosedRT settings #5263
FIXED SECURITY ISSUE ID-32: EditPassword Hash Entropy Loss, new passwords will ne salted SHA256 and base64 encoded
Note: the fix only takes effect when the password is being set, existing passwords remain weak
fixed Local Denial of Service (DoS) Vulnerability Exploitable by Sandboxed Process CVE-2026-32603 (reported by sammy12342)
fixed Sandboxie-Plus EditAdminOnly Bypass via INI CRLF Injection (reported by sammy12342)
fixed issues with GetRawInputDeviceInfoSlave (reported by sammy12342)
fixed an issue with RunSbieCtrl (reported by Yanchon918s)
fixed name validation in ProcessServer handlers (reported by Yanchon918s)
fixed parameter validation in NamedPipeServer (reported by Yanchon918s)
fixed file integrity issues with updater (reported by sammy12342)