sing-box-drover (tray controller for sing-box on Windows)

sing-box-drover is a lightweight utility for Windows that runs the original sing-box in the background and provides minimal, convenient control from the system tray:

• Tray icon reflects the current mode: idle, system proxy enabled, or TUN active
• Click on the tray icon to toggle system proxy
• Toggle TUN mode via context menu (requests elevation if needed)
• Switch outbound selectors via context menu

The goal is to keep the full power of a native sing-box config while adding just enough integration with Windows, without turning into another heavy all-in-one client.

Screenshot

About sing-box and why this tool exists

sing-box is one of the main proxy/VPN engines used inside many modern clients. It is powerful and flexible but is designed as a console application with JSON configuration files and no GUI. This is usually inconvenient for non-technical users.

There are many GUI clients built on top of sing-box, but they usually:

• do not expose all features of the original config format
• are large and overcomplicated for simple use cases
• ship their own embedded, sometimes outdated, sing-box binaries

sing-box-drover takes a different approach:

• you download and use the official sing-box.exe yourself
• you keep your normal sing-box JSON config as-is
• the program only adds a small tray UI on top

This is close to how the official client works: full control stays in the config, and the UI is only a thin layer on top.

Not implemented

• No profile/config switching inside the program: only one sing-box config file is used (path is set in the program config).
• No built-in autostart manager (see the Autostart section below).

Installation

1. Download sing-box-drover. Get the latest version of the program from the latest release page.

2. Download the official sing-box for Windows from the upstream project:
   https://github.com/SagerNet/sing-box/releases
   Choose the archive with windows-amd64 in the filename.

3. Place files

   • Put sing-box-drover.exe (and its config file from the archive) into any folder.
   • Put sing-box.exe into the same folder, or specify another folder via sb-dir (see below).
   • Prepare your sing-box JSON config file and point the program to it.

After that, run sing-box-drover.exe. A tray icon should appear.

sing-box configuration requirements

sing-box-drover expects some specific fields in the sing-box config.

Required inbound

There must be an inbound of type mixed. The program reads its listen and listen_port and uses them to configure the Windows system proxy:

{
  // ...
  "inbounds": [
    {
      "type": "mixed",
      "tag": "mixed-in", // any tag, not used by the program
      "listen": "127.0.0.1",
      "listen_port": 1080 // can be changed
    }
  ],
  // ...
}

The tag value is ignored by the program; only the type and address/port are important.

If your config also contains a tun inbound, the TUN toggle will appear in the tray context menu.

Required Clash API section

To allow outbound switching from the tray menu, experimental.clash_api must be enabled:

{
  // ...
  "experimental": {
    "clash_api": {
      "external_controller": "127.0.0.1:9090", // can be changed
      "secret": "change-me" // any non-empty string
    }
  },
  // ...
}

• external_controller — address for the Clash-compatible API.
• secret — API token.

If this section is missing but your config has selectors, the program will add it automatically.

Selectors for outbound switching (optional)

In your outbounds section, define one or more selector outbounds. They will appear in the tray menu:

{
  // ...
  "outbounds": [
    {
      "type": "selector",
      "tag": "proxy-select",
      "outbounds": [
        "Proxy1",
        "Proxy2"
      ],
      "default": "Proxy1",
      "interrupt_exist_connections": true
    },
    // plus your normal outbounds
  ],
  // ...
}

The selector tag becomes the menu title, outbounds become menu items. Selectors are reset to their default values on startup.

Program configuration

The program uses a simple INI-style config file included in the archive. The default content looks like this:

[sing-box-drover]
sb-dir =
sb-config-file = config.json
tun-start-mode = off
system-proxy-auto = 1
; Selector menu layout: "flat" or "nested"
selector-menu-layout = flat

Parameters:

• sb-dir — path to the folder with sing-box.exe.
  If empty, the program searches for sing-box.exe in its own folder.

• sb-config-file — sing-box config file.
  You can specify just a file name or an absolute path.

• tun-start-mode — whether to enable TUN mode on program start (requires a tun inbound in your sing-box config):

  • off — start without TUN; you can enable it later from the tray menu.
  • on — enable TUN immediately on start.

• system-proxy-auto — automatic system proxy management:

  • 1 — enable on start, disable on exit.
  • 0 — manual toggling only.

• selector-menu-layout — layout of selectors in the tray menu:

  • flat — each selector name is shown as a disabled header, with its options as radio items below, separated by a divider.
  • nested — each selector is shown as a submenu containing its options.

The rest of the behavior is fully controlled by your sing-box configuration.

Autostart

sing-box-drover does not have built-in autostart management.

If you want the program to start automatically with Windows:

1. Press Win + R.
2. Enter shell:startup and press Enter.
3. In the opened folder, create a shortcut to sing-box-drover.exe.

Windows will then launch sing-box-drover automatically at logon.