Sandboxie is sandbox-based isolation software for 32- and 64-bit Windows NT-based operating systems. 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 was initially released in 2004 as a tool for sandboxing Internet Explorer. Over time, the program was expanded to support other browsers and arbitrary Win32 applications.
In December 2013, Invincea announced the acquisition of Sandboxie.
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 would continue as normal.
In September 2019, Sophos switched to a new license.
In 2020 Sophos has released Sandboxie as Open Source under the GPLv3 licence to the community for further developement and maintanance.