For the purposes of this list, a portable application is software that can be used from portable storage devices such as USB flash drives, digital audio players, PDAs[1] or external hard drives. To be considered for inclusion, an application must be executable on multiple computers from removable storage without installation, and without writing settings or data onto a computer's non-removable storage. This includes modified portable versions of non-portable applications.

Example of a 4GB USB flash drive

Bundles

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Launchers

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Development

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Scripting languages

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Compilers

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Setup creators

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Visual mapping/productivity tools

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Graphics

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3D modeling and rendering

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  • Anim8or – Free 3D modeling and animating software.
  • Blender:
    • BlenderPortable
    • Blender Pocket
    • XBlender[2]

Animation

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Graphic editors

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Icon editors

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Viewers

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Document-based

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Office and publishing

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Editors

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Personal notes

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Educational

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Games

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Emulators

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Plug-in emulators

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Internet

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  • ChatZilla Note: Requires a Mozilla based browser, e.g. SeaMonkey, or Firefox.
  • Miranda NG
  • mIRC Note: There is a U3 version of mIRC that can be installed on U3 drives. The original application is portable, leaving behind only the license key in the registry. (This may not be true with the newer versions that are Vista-compatible, as their default user data area was changed to the user's application data folder.) Since v3.1, it can be started from a command line using the -portable switch to use settings, DLLs, and license keys that are stored in the same folder as mirc.exe.
  • Nettalk
  • Pidgin (formerly Gaim)
  • Opera (Integrated Irc client)
  • HexChat
  • Portable X-Chat Aqua – for Mac OS X

RSS, Atom readers

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  • RSSOwl (needs Java runtime environment)
  • Opera (Integrated RSS/Atom client)

Telnet, SSH clients

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Podcast managers

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Anonymity/Anti-censorship

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Miscellaneous

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  • Ahnenblatt multilingual Genealogy software
  • Moka5 LivePC Engine (Portable VMware). Dynamically loads and unloads network drivers and requires administrator rights.
  • Mojopac portable chopped down copy of windows. Requires administrator rights.

Multimedia

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File converters

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Editors

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Audio/MIDI sequencer

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  • Reaper has a .bat file for a USB stick installation

Players

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Recorders

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Video capture

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Video repair

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Networking

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Miscellaneous

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Other tools

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Web editors

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Calendar management

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File management

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File archivers/extractors

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  • 7-Zip
  • Filzip
  • PeaZip, for BSD, Linux and Windows
  • WinRAR, Portable version for Windows, still requires having a license for a regular version of WinRAR. The version number for WinRAR Unplugged is 3.8.0.1, while the latest WinRAR for Windows version is 4.11

PDF tools

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Readers

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Writers

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Security and encryption

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Password management

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Anti-spyware/malware

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Antivirus

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Real-time disk/volume Encryption

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System maintenance

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Optimization and cleaning

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Storage management

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Visual maps of free space and biggest files and folders on hard drive.

System information

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  • CPU-Z – CPU and memory hardware details – clock and FSB speeds, SPD, OS version.
  • AIDA32 – freeware system information, diagnostics, and auditing program
  • Speccy – System information tool.

Partition/file recovery

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See also

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References

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  1. ^ makeuseof.com. "100 Portable Apps for your USB Stick". Retrieved 2008-01-24.
  2. ^ Older Version of BLender