Microsoft is planning to make Windows 10 devices even safer when running unknown applications. Although developers and system administrators use virtual machines or secondary devices to test applications before deploying them to a production environment, the software giant is building a new feature that allows apps to run in a secure isolated environment with a new feature called “Windows Sandbox.”
The feature works like a virtual machine, but it’s just a 100MB lightweight installation of Windows 10 enough to install and run untrusted classic programs isolated from the main installation.
Once you finish using the app, the sandbox gets deleted. Although you don’t need to create a virtual machine, it uses hardware virtualization technology and Microsoft’s hypervisor to run a separate kernel which isolates Windows Sandbox from the host, which means that you’ll only be able to use this feature on devices with support for virtualization.
Windows Sandbox is expected to arrive sometime in 2019, and it’ll be available for Windows 10 Pro and Windows 10 Enterprise. Testers will be able to try this feature starting with build 18305 part of the 19H1 development.
