Picasa Portable for Win 11

Why this exists

Back in the Windows 7 days, I used JauntePE to make Picasa portable. It worked beautifully — you could have a dozen separate Picasa Portable folders, each holding a different project's photo library, completely isolated from each other and from the host system.

That stopped working on Windows 11 — JauntePE's runtime hooks don't survive on modern Windows. This project is a humble attempt to bring the same workflow back, with a different approach: instead of API hooking, it uses Sandboxie-Plus to virtualize Picasa's file and registry writes into a portable folder.

What it does

The multi-library workflow

After installing the first copy, just copy the entire installed folder to make a new isolated library. Each copy is fully independent — its own albums, its own face-tags, its own watched folder.

C:\PicasaPortable_Wedding2014\
C:\PicasaPortable_FamilyArchive\
C:\PicasaPortable_ClientJob_Acme\
C:\PicasaPortable_Travel_Japan\

Launch whichever you need; the others stay untouched. The original JauntePE idea, finally back on Windows 11.

Note: Sandboxie's service is shared across all copies, so they all share the same Picasa sandbox name. Don't run two copies at the same time — close one before launching another.

How the isolation works

• FileRootPath — sandbox stores everything in the portable folder's data\, never C:\Sandbox\…
• ReadFilePath — only the portable Pictures\ subfolder is readable; rest of the host is invisible
• WriteFilePath on %LocalAppData%\Google — host's existing Picasa data is hidden, but the sandbox can still create its own database (the trick that fixes the err=11 save errors)
• ClosedFilePath on host Pictures / Documents / Desktop / Downloads / Music / Videos / OneDrive / Public — fully blocked
• BlockNetworkFiles=y — no network share access
• ConfigLevel=9 — strict mode

First-run, what to expect

• Download PicasaPortable-Setup-v1.0.3.exe from Releases, run it, pick a folder.
• Double-click Picasa.exe — UAC prompt appears (only once per PC; registers the Sandboxie kernel service).
• Sandboxie Setup Wizard opens — pick "Personally, for private non-commercial use", click Next → Finish.
• Picasa launches inside the sandbox — straight to the main UI with your library. Drop photos into Pictures\ and Picasa picks them up automatically (the launcher pre-configures the watched-folder list with the current drive letter on every run).
• If your photos are PNGs (e.g. screenshots), enable them once: Tools → Options → File Types → check .png (and any others you want — .tif, .gif, etc.) → OK. Picasa ships with .png off by default and will silently skip them otherwise. The setting persists in the portable folder.
• That's it. Every launch after this is instant — no prompts, no UAC.
• No Photo Viewer Configuration popup (v1.0.3+). Picasa 3's built-in "Use Picasa Photo Viewer as the default viewer for these file types?" dialog (which hung under Sandboxie) is suppressed — the registration tool isn't bundled. Double-clicking a photo from inside Picasa opens it in your Windows default (Photos / whatever you have), which is what a portable workflow wants anyway.
• Auto-update toast (v1.0.2+). Once every 6 hours, the launcher quietly checks GitHub for a newer release. If there is one, a small dark toast pops up at the bottom-right corner — click it to open the release page, or wait 12 seconds and it self-dismisses. Picasa launches at full speed regardless. Opt out by creating <install>\data\update-config.txt with the single line enabled=false.

Known limitations

• Windows 11 64-bit only. Tested there; older Windows untested.
• Best on clean PCs. If the host already has Picasa installed, some of its existing database may leak through paths Sandboxie's default templates allow — uncommon in 2026, but worth knowing.
• Picasa 3.9 itself is abandonware. Google retired it in 2016. No updates, no Picasa Web Albums. This project just makes the local features usable again on Windows 11.