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List of portable software

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A USB key

Portable software is a class of software that is suitable for use on portable drives such as a USB (thumb) drive or iPod or Palm PDA with "drive mode", although any external hard drive could theoretically be used. [1] [2] The concept of carrying one's favored applications, utilities, and files on a portable drive for use on any computer is one which has evolved considerably in recent years.

Programs in this category (also known as portable applications) are typically 'lite' versions of their parent software, but there are many exceptions.

To be considered portable, for purpose of this list, a software program must:

  1. Not require any kind of formal installation onto a computer's permanent storage device to be executed, and can be stored on a removable storage device such as USB flash drive, enabling it to be used on multiple computers.
  2. Settings are stored with, and can be carried around with, the software (i.e., they are written to the USB drive). If the registry is used to store settings, the application's configuration isn't portable, and must be set up on every PC it is used on
  3. Leaves a zero (or near-zero) "footprint" on any PC it's run on after being used. i.e., All temporary files/registry settings should be removed once the program has exited, and files created by the user can be saved directly to the same removable media as the application is stored on.

Generally, smaller utility/toolkit software is inherently fairly portable; though larger applications are sometimes changed in order to allow a portable versions to be released (e.g., Opera@USB).

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

Application launchers

A more detailed comparison may be found at Comparison of portable platforms

Development

IDEs

Scripting Languages

Visual mapping tool/Productivity tool

Graphics

3D Modeling And Rendering

  • Anim8or
    • Free 3D modeling and animating software.
  • Blender:
    • BlenderPortable
    • Blender Pocket
    • XBlender
  • Wings3d
    • All versions are portable

Graphic Editors

Processing

Viewers

Document Based

Office and Publishing

Editors

  • EmEditor Professional - for portability, select Import and Export on Tools menu.
  • gVim - for advanced users
  • Notepad++
  • Notepad2
  • NoteTab Light
  • Q10 - fullscreen, for writers.
  • PSPad - for portable use choose CAB archive
  • SciTE - for portability, set SciTE_HOME environment variable before launching
  • TED Notepad - for portability, create a tednpad.ini file
  • Editplus - for syntax highlighting, file type conversions, search-and-replace using regular expressions, searching in files, keystroke recording, spell check, auto-completion, code folding, etc.
  • Textpad for text documents of every sort.
  • UltraEdit (UE3)
  • VEDIT - for portability, check "Install onto removable USB drive" checkbox on the first setup dialog.

Personal Notes

  • CintaNotes - simple personal notes manager, completely portable
  • NotesHolder - desktop notes, for portability install it in Portable mode.

Educational

Games

See List of portable computer games

Internet

Web browsers

Email clients

Instant messaging

FTP clients

Download managers

P2P file sharing

IRC

  • Chatzilla Note: Requires a Mozilla based browser, e.g. SeaMonkey, or Firefox.
  • HydraIRC
  • Miranda IM
  • 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)
  • Operausb (Integrated Irc client)
  • Xchat
  • Portable X-Chat Aqua - for Mac OS X
  • kvirc

RSS, Atom readers

Telnet, SSH clients

Bookmark managers

Search engines

Podcast managers

Proxy server/clients and Routing Networks

Wikis

Wiki-like (Note: These are not web-based)

Miscellaneous

  • Moka5 LivePC Engine (Portable VMWare). Note: Dynamically loads and unloads network drivers and requires administrator rights.
  • Mojopac portable chopped down copy of windows. Requires administrator rights.

Multimedia

File converters

  • Audiograbber is a CD audio extractor (digitally).
  • BonkEnc
  • CDex
  • MediaCoder
  • SUPER - (Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer) is a program that easily encapsulates the capabilities of ffmpeg, MEncoder, mplayer, x264, mppenc, ffmpeg2theora, and the theora/vorbis RealProducer plugIn. Has problems with portability.
  • TMPGEnc - a video encoder that supports HDV import/output along with DivX 6 AVI, MPEG-1/2/4, QuickTime (MOV), and Window Media (WMV/WMV-HD/WMA) input/output.

CD/DVD burning

Editors

Audio/Midi Sequencer

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

Players

Recorders

Video Capture

Networking

HTTP servers

See also

Web applications run using the HTTP server

Once a portable web server such as XAMPP or WOS is running, portable applications requiring the Apache and MySQL can then be run. Some examples of which are:

Miscellaneous

Other Tools

Web Editors

  • Portable Nvu and KompoZer - for Mac OS X and Windows.
  • OpenOffice.org Portable - Complete office suite, which includes HTML editor.

Calendar management

File management

File Archivers and Extractors

  • 7-Zip Portable Also for U3 launchpad
  • Filzip
  • PeaZip, for Linux and Windows
  • iZarc2go, Portable version of iZarc
  • WinRAR, Portable version for Windows, still requires having a license for a regular version of WinRAR. The version number for WinRAR Unplugged is 3.7.1.1, while the latest WinRAR for Windows version is 3.80.

Unit Converters

  • Converber is a unit converter that supports over 1000 various units of measure in 32 categories. Customizable.

PDF Tools

Readers

Writers

Security and Encryption

Password Management

Anti-Spyware/Malware

AntiVirus

Real-Time Disk/Volume Encryption

Note: All of the software in this section requires administrator privileges to start their respective drivers.

File Encryption

System Maintenance

Storage Management

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

System Information

  • CPU-Z - CPU and memory hardware details - clock and FSB speeds, SPD, OS version.
  • AIDA32 - freeware system information, diagnostics, and auditing program written by Tamas Miklos, Win 95-XP.

Partition/File Recovery

See also

References

  1. ^ John Guilfoil (2006-09-07). "Fun with Portable Software". Retrieved 2008-01-24. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  2. ^ makeuseof.com. "100 Portable Apps for your USB Stick". Retrieved 2008-01-24.
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