Tool Spotlight: PortableApps

Occasionally, I run into a program or a set of programs that I just want to share with the world. Today, I'm going to talk about PortableApps.

I first ran into PortableApps several years ago, when I purchased a USB drive. My thought process was, essentially, like this:

"Gee, I wonder if I can set this up to be like a portable computer..."

Enter PortableApps, one of the results that came up when I was looking through my favorite search engine. As long as you're on a Windows computer, and you have access to your USB drive, you can have a set of programs that you can use.

PortableApps itself acts kind of like a Start menu. It shows up with the rest of your running background programs, by default on the lower right of your screen, along with your network connection, volume, etc. You click on it, and it allows you to launch any programs on your USB drive, as long as they follow a pretty basic directory structure.

While this doesn't seem like much, and might not even be much if you have a tablet that you can use as a computer, it means that you can borrow someone else's computer and use it like your own. If you're a hobbyist developer, you can put all of your projects, development environments, etc. on your thumb drive and not worry about a different computer having a different version of that environment. If you like listening to music and want to take that music to work with you, set your PortableApps environment up with a media player, stick your music on there, and have it to go.

Again, you may not fit into this category, but even if you don't, remember the link to the PortableApps website. Besides this nifty environment they offer, they have a pretty sizable library of free apps. All of the apps that they have are free. And you can install them anywhere. And since they're designed to work from a thumb drive, they install to one folder. Since they don't modify any system files at all, you shouldn't even need installation privileges. To uninstall, simply delete the folder. So if you quickly need a photo editing program, they've got you covered. If you need a little widget that you only need once a month or less, just download it, use it, and get rid of it.

So, yeah, use PortableApps. Discover what you can do with it, and what it can do for you.