Windows Sandbox — light weight playground for R&D, tutorials and workshops

Windows Sandbox to me is a light weight Windows 10 virtual machine that I can quickly start and stop and use to install and run programs. The Windows Sandbox provides a well defined, clean environment that is fresh every time it is started. Inside the Sandbox, I can create an isolated environment for working through a tutorial or the labs in a workshop or for doing R&D to stuff I do not want (yet) in my regular Windows environment. One instance of the Sandbox can run at any one time.

The Sandbox has its own IP address. I can access applications running in the Sandbox over HTTP and vice versa (if I want to, I can define firewall rules to prevent this cross-boundary traffic). I can copy and paste files to and from the Sandbox. Additionally, I can configure mapped folders — folders from the Windows host to appear in the Sandbox. Apps in the Sandbox are run under the user account “WDAGUtilityAccount”. Hence, all folders are mapped under the following path: C:\Users\WDAGUtilityAccount\Desktop.

Windows Sandbox is based on Hyper-V, but does not require users to activate the hypervisor themselves. It is not necessary to install a guest operating system in the VM either; rather, it is generated automatically from the binaries of the host OS (see this article on the Windows Sandbox).

Sandbox configurations (XML files with wsb extension) can be prepared and used to start a Sandbox from.

You can configure host directories — on the regular Windows environment — to be mapped into the Sandbox. You may also specify Startup Scripts- PowerShell scripts to execute when the Sandbox is started, that can prepare — configure, install — the sandbox for what you want to do to it. The Windows Sandbox Editor is a GUI tool to edit Sandbox configuration files.

Note: Windows Sandbox is introduced in Windows 1903 — installed yesterday on my laptop.

To Get Started Quickly

To use Windows Sandbox, the feature must be turned on: