Most modern web browsers have a private browsing mode that lets you surf the web without saving any data to your history making it safe to look for birthday presents or… other things in privacy.
Google calls the feature incognito mode. Mozilla calls it Private browsing. And in Microsoft’s Edge web browser, it’s called InPrivate mode.
Now Microsoft seems to be repurposing that name for a new Windows 10 security feature that will let you run untrusted apps in a secure, sandboxed environment to prevent them from harming your PC. It’s called InPrivate Desktop.
Spotted by the folks at BleepingComputer, the new feature hasn’t officially been announced. But a mention of the upcoming feature showed up in Microsoft’s Feedback Hub briefly.
At launch InPrivate Desktop seems to be aimed at business users, as Windows 10 Enterprise is listed as a prerequisite. Another requirement is a computer with support for CPU virtualization and at least two CPU cores, 4GB of RAM, and 5GB of storage. It’s unclear if the feature will eventually make its way to Windows 10 Pro or Home.
So how does it work? Basically system administrators can use InPrivate Desktop to launch a virtual machine that will run an app in a self-contained environment. Close the app and the virtual machine will be recycled, deleting any data.
Can I run cracked apps that I download from bittorrent safely? They all have viruses, but if I can run them safely that would be great.
I’m sure that’s exactly what Microsoft had in mind. 🙂
Sounds like a feature that would be useful for a lot of people. I wonder if the general public will ever get to use it or will it forever be an Enterprise feature.
We got the VM browser option recently so there is hope.
This is pretty much the same thing as Windows XP Mode back in the Windows 7 days. It’s a great feature and lm glad they’re bring it back.