A desktop app for creating and managing isolated Mac environments.

OpenBox gives Mac users a visual way to create, start, stop, inspect, and remove sandboxes. Its main focus is full-featured macOS isolated environments: launch a macOS guest sandbox, open its desktop session, run commands, and use an embedded terminal from one app.

Ready-to-use images make the first sandbox quick to launch.

Download the latest DMG | Compatibility

OpenBox is early alpha software for people who want safe, isolated macOS sandboxes on Apple Silicon.

AI agents are getting better at operating computers, running commands, editing files, testing apps, and exploring unfamiliar workflows. OpenBox gives them a dedicated place to explore: a disposable macOS sandbox for commands, app tests, installs, and experiments.

OpenBox keeps the agent's desktop, files, credentials, browser state, and work setup separate from your everyday Mac.

• Create and manage isolated Linux or macOS sandboxes from a visual interface.
• Launch full macOS guest environments with keyboard, pointer, graphics, and desktop session support.
• Start from ready-to-use images for a quick first run.
• Run terminal commands inside the sandbox.
• Start, stop, inspect, and remove sandboxes when an experiment is done.
• Keep logs and diagnostics accessible for each sandbox.

OpenBox is most useful for AI exploration, command-line tasks, app testing, and recoverable experiments in a dedicated Mac environment.

1. Use an Apple Silicon Mac running macOS 26 or later.

2. Download the latest DMG from GitHub Releases.

3. Open the DMG and drag OpenBox.app to /Applications.

4. Launch OpenBox.

5. Choose a ready-to-use image or add your own image reference, create a sandbox, then start it from the sandbox detail view.

6. For supported macOS guest sandboxes, enable desktop GUI when creating the sandbox, then open the desktop session or terminal from the detail view.

For source builds, see Build From Source.

OpenBox follows the runtime requirements of Apple's container stack.

The Xcode project currently has MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=15.5. The embedded container services follow Apple's upstream container and Containerization requirements, which currently document macOS 26 as their supported runtime/build target. See docs/COMPATIBILITY.md for the full compatibility note.

git clone git@github.com:jianliang00/open-box.git
cd open-box
open OpenBox.xcodeproj

Then in Xcode:

1. Resolve Swift package dependencies.
2. Select the OpenBox scheme.
3. Build or run the app.

The app embeds its container runtime during the Xcode build using Scripts/embed-container-runtime.sh. If you are developing against a local container checkout, set:

export OPENBOX_CONTAINER_PACKAGE_DIR=/path/to/container

before building.

OpenBox currently pins a fork of apple/container through jianliang00/container. The pinned revision is intentional while OpenBox depends on app-embedded runtime integration work. The lower-level apple/containerization dependency remains Apple's official package, as resolved through the pinned container checkout.

All dependency versions and revisions are pinned in OpenBox.xcodeproj/project.xcworkspace/xcshareddata/swiftpm/Package.resolved.

• OpenBox/ contains the SwiftUI app, state model, container SDK service, and embedded terminal view.
• OpenBoxTests/ contains focused unit tests for image parsing, runtime state, terminal behavior, and service helpers.
• OpenBoxUITests/ currently contains launch smoke-test scaffolding.
• Scripts/embed-container-runtime.sh builds and embeds the container runtime products into the app bundle.
• docs/ contains compatibility notes, brand assets, and screenshots.

Pushing a semantic version tag such as 1.0.0 triggers the GitHub Actions release workflow. The workflow builds the Release app on a macOS 26 runner, packages OpenBox-<tag>.dmg, signs and notarizes the DMG, and attaches it to a GitHub Release.

Latest release: github.com/jianliang00/open-box/releases/latest

OpenBox is in the 0.0.x line and should be treated as alpha software. The near-term focus is reducing setup friction, clarifying compatibility, hardening runtime reliability, and replacing placeholder UI tests with real workflow coverage.

OpenBox is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. See LICENSE.