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dean released this
2026-06-30 19:57:07 -05:00 | 48 commits to main since this release📅 Originally published on GitHub: Wed, 01 Jul 2026 01:35:42 GMT
🏷️ Git tag created: Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:57:07 GMT-
Windows 11 (ARM64) VMs on macOS. On an Apple Silicon Mac, App Sandbox can
now create and run Windows 11 ARM guests -- previously a macOS host could only
run macOS guests. The Windows guest gets its own display window, keyboard and
mouse, sound, clipboard (including copying files to and from your Mac),
one-click SSH, and networking, and is built from a Windows 11 ARM64 ISO you
provide. It uses QEMU, EDK2 on Apple's Hypervisor Framework as the firmware and
virtaulization platform, and IVSHMEM to enable host <-> VM communication. -
Non-ASCII usernames and passwords now work when creating a VM through the
scriptable API. Characters outside plain ASCII (for example Chinese) arrive
from the API JSON-escaped; App Sandbox stored the escape sequences literally
instead of decoding them, so a VM created via the API with such a credential
would reject the login. They are now decoded correctly. (The desktop app was
unaffected.) -
The virtual display now recovers if it gets disabled in the guest. The
guest agent kept trying to restart the App Sandbox display driver -- which
can't re-enable a disabled device -- so the picture never came back; it is now
re-enabled and recovers. -
Various stability and bug fixes across the Windows and macOS components.
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Windows VMs on macOS are not GPU-accelerated.
Downloads
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2026-06-11 21:08:26 -05:00 | 65 commits to main since this release📅 Originally published on GitHub: Fri, 12 Jun 2026 02:44:30 GMT
🏷️ Git tag created: Fri, 12 Jun 2026 02:08:26 GMT-
Headless mode with a scriptable HTTP/JSON API (Windows + macOS). Launch
App Sandbox with--headlessto run a single-owner background daemon exposing
a loopback HTTP/JSON API that mirrors the GUI: create, start, shut down, edit,
and delete VMs; manage snapshots, branches, and templates (Windows); read SSH
connection info; subscribe to a live event stream; and open or close a VM's
display window -- all from a script. Ships a dependency-free Python SDK,
runnable examples, and a cross-platform test suite (bundled in the release
package under headless-api/, alongside the app). Launching via GUI is unchanged. -
One-click SSH key login. With the SSH server enabled, the new "Deploy SSH
key" option installs an App Sandbox key into the guest (Windows, Linux, and
macOS) so the GUI's SSH button and the SDK connect without a password. -
Excessive GPU usage while viewing a Windows VM. The display window was
redrawing as fast as it could -- presenting ~2,100 frames a second and holding
the host GPU near 90% even on a static screen. It now redraws only when the
picture changes (plus a small safety refresh), dropping to the real frame rate
(~30-60 fps) with no added latency. -
macOS: text fields no longer autocorrect or autocapitalize VM names,
usernames, paths, and snapshot names as you type. -
x64 (emulated) apps in ARM Windows VMs don't get the OpenGL fix -- the
Mesa driver shipped on ARM is ARM64-only; native ARM64 apps get full GPU
OpenGL. (carried over from 0.1.2) -
ARM Linux (Ubuntu 26.04 LTS) guests do not work -- on ARM, Windows is the
only working guest (Ubuntu 26.04's arm64 kernel churns BPF JIT memory and
never reaches the desktop). (carried over from 0.1.2)
Downloads
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2026-06-07 14:30:17 -05:00 | 86 commits to main since this release📅 Originally published on GitHub: Sun, 07 Jun 2026 20:18:14 GMT
🏷️ Git tag created: Sun, 07 Jun 2026 19:30:17 GMTAdded
- Windows on ARM (ARM64). App Sandbox now runs on ARM64 Windows PCs and can
create ARM Windows 11 VMs with GPU-PV — paravirtualized GPU acceleration in
the guest. Test platform: Asus Zenbook A14 Snapdragon X Plus 2025. - GPU-Test.exe. Which is a simple tool available for Windows x64/ARM that tests
all rendering APIs at once (D3D12, D3D11, D3D10, D3D9, OpenGL, Metal).
Fixed
- Hardware OpenGL in Windows VMs. OpenGL apps in the guest were stuck on
Windows' GDI Generic software renderer (OpenGL 1.1) — apps needing OpenGL 4.3+
(e.g. Blender) refused to start. The old approach selected Microsoft's OpenGLOn12
driver via an AppInit DLL, but Windows disables AppInit DLLs when Secure Boot is
on — and App Sandbox runs guests with Secure Boot on by default — so it never
engaged (and even when it did, Windows' opengl32 dropped the GPU driver across the
virtual GPU's render/display split). App Sandbox now installs the Mesa OpenGL
driver directly into the guest, taking Windows' broken opengl32 out of the path,
so apps get real GPU-accelerated OpenGL 4.6 (or software 4.6 with no GPU) — with
Secure Boot left on. - New VMs could fail to start with an odd memory size. HCS (Windows' Host
Compute Service) requires VM memory to be a multiple of 2 MB; the suggested
default (half the host RAM) or a manually entered value could be odd (e.g. 7991 MB)
and fail to start. RAM is now rounded to an even value in the suggested default,
the create form, and inline edits. - New Sandbox dialog no longer closes by accident. Selecting text in a field
and releasing the mouse outside the dialog no longer dismisses it. - Various stability and bug fixes across the Windows, macOS, and Linux components.
Known issues
- x64 (emulated) apps in ARM Windows VMs don't get the OpenGL fix. The Mesa
driver shipped on ARM is ARM64-only, so emulated x64 apps fail to initalize OpenGL,
native ARM64 apps get full GPU OpenGL. x64 Apps can still use DirectX and Vulkan! - ARM Linux (Ubuntu 26.04 LTS) guests do not work in this release — on ARM,
Windows is the only guest that works. Ubuntu 26.04's arm64 kernel constantly
churns BPF JIT memory, which makes the kernel boot extremely slowly and never
reach the Ubuntu desktop. On a Qualcomm Snapdragon X1-Plus (ASUS A14) using 25H2,
the guest never came up and the App Sandbox agent never came online.
Downloads
- Windows on ARM (ARM64). App Sandbox now runs on ARM64 Windows PCs and can
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2026-06-01 22:14:15 -05:00 | 117 commits to main since this release📅 Originally published on GitHub: Tue, 02 Jun 2026 03:17:09 GMT
🏷️ Git tag created: Tue, 02 Jun 2026 03:14:15 GMTGPU-accelerated sandboxes for software development and AI agents, isolated from
your real machine - now on macOS as well as Windows.New in this release:
- First release of App Sandbox for macOS: create and run macOS virtual machines
on Apple Silicon Mac hosts. - Nested virtualization for Windows and Ubuntu sandboxes created with the Windows
version of App Sandbox - run VMs, WSL2, and containers inside a sandbox.
Downloads:
- Windows: AppSandbox-0.1.1-win-x64.zip - Intel or AMD, Windows 11+
- macOS: AppSandbox-0.1.1-mac-arm64.zip - Apple Silicon, macOS 26 (Tahoe)+
Downloads
- First release of App Sandbox for macOS: create and run macOS virtual machines
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2026-05-31 21:46:33 -05:00 | 130 commits to main since this release📅 Originally published on GitHub: Mon, 01 Jun 2026 02:48:54 GMT
🏷️ Git tag created: Mon, 01 Jun 2026 02:46:33 GMTGPU-accelerated sandboxes on Windows for running untrusted software
and AI agents in isolation from your real machine.- One-click Windows and Ubuntu sandboxes on any Windows 11 edition, including
Home - built on Host Compute Service, the same backend as WSL2 and Docker
(no Hyper-V required) - Host GPU shared into the guest via GPU-PV: DirectX, CUDA, OpenGL, Vulkan, OpenCL
- No internet or network connection required - display, audio, clipboard, input,
and SSH all happen over direct host <-> sandbox communication via Hyper-V sockets - Snapshots and reusable templates
Downloads
- One-click Windows and Ubuntu sandboxes on any Windows 11 edition, including
mirror of
https://github.com/jamesstringer90/appsandbox.git
synced 2026-10-21 18:43:07 -05:00