--- title: Portable Apps date: "2010-01-19T04:17:24Z" categories: - top-10-lists wp_id: 2437 description: I shared my curated list of portable applications that run without admin rights or installation. This collection includes tools like Firefox, VLC, and Notepad++ for media, development, and system utilities directly from a USB stick. keywords: [portableapps, usb applications, windows utilities, notepad++, vlc media player, xampp, cygwin, sysinternals] --- I’m totally hooked to [portable apps](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_application) now. You don’t need admin rights to install them. You can run them off a USB stick. They won’t make your machine slower. All the reasons not to install an application vanish. [PortableApps.com](http://portableapps.com/) is a good starting point. For what it’s worth, here are my portable apps by category (most used on top). **Platforms** - [Firefox](http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable). If you’re using IE6, please die. Lack of admin access is no longer an excuse. - [Cygwin](http://www.cygwin.com/) brings you UNIX commands to Windows. - [Portable Ubuntu](http://portableubuntu.demonccc.com.ar/) run Ubuntu as a window in Windows. **Tiny utilities** - [GDI++](http://drwatson.nobody.jp/gdi++/download-en.html) replaces the Windows font engine with a Mac-line rendering. Looks cool. - [Clip](http://www.petri.co.il/software/clip.zip) is a command line tool that copies to clipboard. “dir | clip” copies the file listing to the clipboard. Outrageously useful. - [PicPick](http://picpick-portable.en.softonic.com/) takes screenshots of the screen, windows, regions, whatever. And you can edit them too. - [uTorrent](http://www.utorrent.com/) downloads torrents. - [WinDiff](http://www.grigsoft.com/download-windiff.htm) compares two files and tells you the difference. - [AlwaysOnTopMaker](http://www.fadsoft.net/AlwaysOnTopMaker.htm) makes any window stay on top of other windows. - [DiskTT](http://www.snapfiles.com/get/disktt.html) tells you your hard disk (or USB stick) speed. - [WinHTTrack](http://www.httrack.com/) downloads websites. - [AllChars](http://allchars.zwolnet.com/) lets you type special characters like ½ by type Alt-1-2 or “ by Alt-`-`. It’s shockingly intuitive. - [Restoration](http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.HTML) lets you undelete permanently deleted files. - [Windirstat](http://windirstat.info/) tells you what’s taking up space on your disk. - [Sysinternals](http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb842062.aspx) is a bunch of system monitoring utilities. - [Virtual CD-ROM](http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/b/6/7b6abd84-7841-4978-96f5-bd58df02efa2/winxpvirtualcdcontrolpanel_21.exe) mounts .ISO files. You can use .ISO files without burning them. - [Autostitch](http://people.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html) stitches together photos to create panoramas. **Media** - [VLC](http://portableapps.com/apps/music_video/vlc_portable) plays any audio or video file. - [TightVNC](http://www.tightvnc.com/portable/) lets you log into other machines like a remote desktop./li> - [Audacity](http://portableapps.com/apps/music_video/audacity_portable) lets you record and edit audio. - [CamStudio](http://camstudio.org/) lets you record video (screen capture). - [VirtualDub](http://portableapps.com/apps/music_video/virtualdub_portable) lets you edit video. - [MediaCoder](http://www.mediacoderhq.com/) converts audio and video from any format to another. - [GIMP](http://portableapps.com/apps/graphics_pictures/gimp_portable) is like Photoshop. You can edit pictures. - [Inkscape](http://portableapps.com/apps/graphics_pictures/inkscape_portable) lets you edit vector graphics. **Servers** - [XAMPP](http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-windows.html) installs Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl at one shot. - [App Engine](http://code.google.com/appengine/) is Google’s freemium platform for app hosting. - [Persevere](http://persevere.sitepen.com/) is a RESTful JSON app server that runs on Java. - [Tomcat](http://tomcat.apache.org/) is a JSP server. - [nginx](http://nginx.org/) is a fast web server - [CouchDB](http://couchdb.apache.org/) is a RESTful JSON app server that runs on Erlang. **Development tools** - [Notepad++](http://portableapps.com/apps/development/notepadpp_portable) is my [current text editor](/blog/in-search-of-a-good-editor/). It has syntax highlighting, column editing, Unicode support, auto-completion, and is fast and free. So I dumped [Crimson Editor](http://www.crimsoneditor.com/). - [Putty](http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/) is SSH for Windows. - [Tidy](http://tidy.sourceforge.net/) cleans up HTML files. - [CSSTidy](http://csstidy.sourceforge.net/) cleans up CSS files. - [Processing](http://processing.org/) is a graphical programming language. - [Wireshark](http://www.wireshark.org/) monitors network traffic. - [Drip](http://sourceforge.net/projects/ieleak/) checks IE for leaks. - [NVDA](http://www.nvda-project.org/) is a free screen reader. Let me repeat: - You don’t need admin rights to install these. - You can run them off a USB stick. - They won’t make your machine slower. There’s really **no** reason whatsoever not to have them on a USB stick at least. They’re cheap. --- ## Comments - **Naveen** _19 Jan 2010 9:34 am_: I have been using portableapps for more than an year now.Though the idea is to run it off a USB stick, this results in poor performance usually, especially for firefox. - **Ganapathy** _13 Feb 2010 5:47 pm_: I landed in your site for analyzing IR songs. The collection of applications in www.pendriveapps.com seems to better than PortableApps.com (my personal opinion).