The simulation

The simplest way to understand RunContainer is one sentence:

It is an app that opens other apps inside itself.

You pick a Windows application, press Run, and that application opens in a window inside RunContainer — with its own files, settings and limits — instead of becoming another stand-alone window and another set of files scattered over your PC.

Simulation

An app that opens apps inside itself

That is the whole idea. RunContainer is one window on your PC; the applications you add open inside it, each in its own environment, instead of becoming another stand-alone icon on your desktop.

Illustration · not a screen recording

RunContainer

AppsEnvironmentsSettings

My Apps3 installed

PPixelPaint StudioDemo editor · 46 MB · InstalledRun

NNoteWellNotes · 12 MB · InstalledRun

RRetro GolfGame · 210 MB · InstalledRun

Each app keeps its own files and settings in its own environment.

PixelPaint Studioin RunContainer

Contained · Job Object caps · own profile folder

Any .exe is installed into its own environment — its files, its profile, its settings.

This is an illustration, not a screen recording

The animation above follows the product's real flow — an app, Run, then the window inside RunContainer — but it is a drawing, not footage. The sample apps are placeholders, the colours follow the site theme rather than your Windows theme, and your real app list shows your own apps with their extracted icons. For the actual interface, watch the video walkthrough or install RunContainer.

What each step shows

1. Pick an app. Anything you add is copied into a managed environment. The app list shows the app's own icon, its name and which environment it belongs to.
2. Press Run. RunContainer starts the app contained, verifies that the containment is actually in force, and only then reports it as running. Nothing is reported as contained on trust.
3. The window opens inside RunContainer. The app's window is hosted in a RunContainer window. An app that requires administrator rights cannot be hosted in the normal window — Windows blocks that across privilege levels — so RunContainer opens a second, administrator-level RunContainer window and hosts the app or installer wizard inside that one instead.
4. Close it. Everything the app wrote stays in its environment. Deleting the environment afterwards removes exactly those files; resetting it keeps them.

Try it yourself

• Download RunContainer and install it.
• Follow Installing applications to add your first .exe.
• Read Running and stopping for what Run does, and Reset and remove for the difference between keeping and deleting an environment's files.

If the animation helped, subscribing to the YouTube channel and joining the Discord is the easiest way to support the project.