This help page is a how-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus.

Shortcut H:SANDH:SAND

This page is not a sandbox. It should not be used for test editing. To experiment, please use the Wikipedia sandbox, your user sandbox, or other sandboxes.

My sandbox is a feature which gives you a place to practice editing, either to build a draft for later publication in the main encyclopedia, or just to practice formatting with wiki markup syntax. If you have a registered account, you will see a link in the upper right corner of the screen (in the drop-down menu if you are using Vector 2022) that says "Sandbox"; this will take you to your sandbox. (Unregistered users don't have personal sandboxes; if you are one, feel free to experiment in the community sandbox until you register an account.)

Note: You can also use the community sandbox to experiment with editing.

The link opens a user subpage Special:MyPage/sandbox.^[1] If the page does not exist then it is opened for editing with {{User sandbox}} added to the top of the editing window. The template notifies readers that the page is a sandbox, not an article, and it prevents the page from being indexed by search engines.

The link is available on the following 81 Wikipedia projects: arwiki (Arabic), atjwiki (Atikamekw), azwiki (Azerbaijani), bhwiki (Bhojpuri), bnwiki (Bengali), cawiki (Catalan), ckbwiki (Central Kurdish (Sorani)), cswiki (Czech), cywiki (Welsh), dawiki (Danish), dtywiki (Doteli), elwiki (Greek), enwiki (English), eowiki (Esperanto), eswiki (Spanish), euwiki (Basque), extwiki (Extremaduran), fawiki (Persian), frwiki (French), gawiki (Irish), gdwiki (Scottish Gaelic), gomwiki (Konkani), hewiki (Hebrew), hiwiki (Hindi), hifwiki (Fiji Hindi), huwiki (Hungarian), hywiki (Armenian), hywwiki (Western Armenian), ilowiki (Ilocano), iswiki (Icelandic), itwiki (Italian), jawiki (Japanese), jvwiki (Javanese), kaawiki (Karakalpak), kkwiki (Kazakh), knwiki (Kannada), kowiki (Korean), kuwiki (Kurdish (Kurmanji)), lawiki (Latin), ladwiki (Ladino), ltwiki (Lithuanian), lvwiki (Latvian), maiwiki (Maithili), minwiki (Minangkabau), mswiki (Malay), mwlwiki (Mirandese), newiki (Nepali), nlwiki (Dutch), nnwiki (Norwegian (Nynorsk)), nowiki (Norwegian (Bokmål)), orwiki (Odia), pawiki (Punjabi), papwiki (Papiamento), plwiki (Polish), pswiki (Pashto), ptwiki (Portuguese), rowiki (Romanian), ruwiki (Russian), sawiki (Sanskrit), sdwiki (Sindhi), shwiki (Serbo-Croatian), shnwiki (Shan), skwiki (Slovak), sowiki (Somali), sqwiki (Albanian), srwiki (Serbian), svwiki (Swedish), swwiki (Swahili), tawiki (Tamil), tcywiki (Tulu), tewiki (Telugu), tgwiki (Tajik), thwiki (Thai), tlwiki (Tagalog), trwiki (Turkish), ukwiki (Ukrainian), urwiki (Urdu), uzwiki (Uzbek), viwiki (Vietnamese), zhwiki (Chinese), and zuwiki (Zulu)

If you want to rename (move) your sandbox, see Wikipedia:How to rename your sandbox.

The sandbox link was previously a gadget but is now a built-in feature. It cannot be disabled in preferences but it can be removed by placing this in your CSS:

li#pt-sandbox { display: none !important; }

The feature lacks feature-settings to support customization; however, it can be removed and a JavaScript version created in userspace.

To create a toolbar link to Special:MyPage/sandbox.

mw.util.addPortletLink(
 'p-personal',
 '/w/index.php?title=Special:MyPage/sandbox&action=edit&preload=Template:User_sandbox/preload&editintro=Template:User_sandbox',
 'My sandbox',
 'pt-mysandbox',
 'Go to your sandbox',
 null,
 '#pt-preferences'
 );

To remove autoedit:

var NoEditSandbox = $('#pt-mysandbox a').slice(0,1).attr('href', '/wiki/User:' + wgUserName + '/sandbox');

If you have multiple sandboxes or other user subpages, it may be more useful to show a list of your subpages:

Ensure you replace username with your username.

 mw.util.addPortletLink(
 'p-personal',
 '/wiki/Special:PrefixIndex/User:username',
 'My subpages',
 'pt-mysubpages',
 'Show my subpages',
 null,
 '#pt-preferences'
 );

Proposals for My sandbox go back to at least 2008,^[2] but the defining proposal was in December 2011.^[3] A Gadget proposal in January 2012 resulted in the addition of My Sandbox.^[4] The gadget was replaced by mw:Extension:SandboxLink in April 2015.^[5]

• Wikipedia:About the Sandbox
• Wikipedia:Drafts