The Best Portable Apps

On this page, you will find the best portable apps to bring with you on the go. We’ve taken the effort to categorize all of the portable apps and picked only those we believe to be the best ones and which will most likely be useful to you.

You can download and install these on a USB stick, an external hard drive, or any other portable device that you carry with you. That means that you can have any of these apps no matter where you go. This page updates frequently so check back often!

By Category:
Audio Communication Image Editors and Viewers
Miscellaneous Productivity Security and Privacy
Suites System Tools Video
Web and FTP

Audio Portable Apps

coolplayer The Best Portable Apps CoolPlayer
A tiny, super-fast audio player.

Download | Full review

audacity The Best Portable Apps Audacity
An open-source, simple and powerful audio editor.

Download | Full review

CDex
Extract audio from CDs reliably.

Download | Full review

must have portable apps SharePod
Manage an iPod with no iTunes from any Windows computer with this portable app.

Download | Full review

foobar2000
A classic audio player for Windows, great for playlists.

Download | Full review

portable apps RadioSure
The best way to listen to radio by desktop or laptop.

Download | Full review

Songr
The best way to search for and download or stream MP3s.

Download | Full review

Hokrain
Listen to your music in a lightweight, minimalist way.

Download | Full review

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Communication Portable Apps

best portable apps Email Stripper
A free portable app that cleans up long email threads.

Download | Full review

Pidgin
A multi-protocol IM client. Packaged by PortableApps.com.

Download | Full review

Miranda IM
Another multi-protocol IM client, with a ton of plugins.

Download

Skype
Not an official installer, but from PortableApps.com.

Download | Full review

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Image Editors and Viewers

Easy Image Modifier
A tool for resizing, flipping, converting, watermarking and renaming images.

Download | Full review

portable apps Inkscape Portable
An open-source vector editor. Think “Illustrator” or “CorelDRAW” — not as powerful, but free.

Download

GIMP
Think “free Photoshop” with a cluttered interface. Powerful, but an acquired taste. Packaged by PortableApps.com.

Download

AndreaMosaic
A freeportable app for creating photomosaics (pictures made up of tiled pictures).

Download | Full review

Fotografix
A tiny image editor aimed at photograpers and designers.

Download | Full review

IrfanView Portable
A fast and powerful image viewer that can also apply effects.

Download

XnView Portable
Convenient for viewing, organizing, and converting your photos.

Download

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Miscellaneous Portable Apps

sWeather
Check the weather and get alerts all from your Windows system tray.

Download | Full review

YTWatcher
Enjoy your YouTube favorites and subscriptions right from your desktop.

Download | Full review

BSNES
An all-in-one emulator that supports all Classic Nintendo consoles.

Download | Full review

Brain Workshop
A dual n-back game scientifically proven to make you smarter.

Download | Full review

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Productivity Apps

WriteMonkey
A fantastic full-screen text editor for distraction-free editing. I use it all the time.

Download | Full review

Abiword
A free, open-source word processor. This is a portable app packaged by PortableApps.com.

Download | Full review

Notepad2
A text editor with programmer-friendly features.

Download | Full review

FocusWriter
Another full-screen editor for a Zen-like writing experience.
Download | Full review
OpenOffice
Not as slick as MS Office, but it will do in a pinch. Packaged by PortableApps.com.

Download

XAMPP
The Apache Web server, MySQL, PHP, and Perl, all bundled together in one portable ZIP.

Download | Full review

TreePad Lite
A personal information manager for notes and other information.

Download | Full review

Stickies
A fantastic sticky-note application, packaged by PortableApps.com.

Download | Full review

DropboxPortableAHK
Lets you take Dropbox on a stick and use it without admin rights.

Download | Full review

Calibre
A tool for managing your ebook collection and converting book formats.

Download | Full review | eBook

Notepad++
A powerful, customizable programmer’s text editor.

Download | Full review

Foxit Reader Portable
A PDF document reader.

Download | Full review

must have portable apps CintaNotes
A slimmed down version of Evernote designed more towards jotting quick notes and thoughts.

Download | Full review

PNotes
Bring sticky notes to your desktop and help remember all of those important things.

Download | Full review

AutoHotKey
Automate keystrokes, mouse gestures, and other actions with one of the most extensive macro engines.

Download | Full review

BBCeditor
Format and save your forum posts even while offline.

Download | Full review

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Security and Privacy

ClamWin
A portable, powerful and free antivirus. Packaged by PortableApps.com.

Download | Full review

LicenseCrawler
Crawls a computer for software serial licenses.

Download | Full review

TrueCrypt
Create encrypted virtual hard drives. Link leads to portable mode documentation.

Download | Full review

KeePass
The golden standard when it comes to securely managing passwords and logins.

Download

PeerBlock
Allows you to block IP ranges of anti-P2P organizations, ad servers, spyware, and more.

Download | Full review

Password Agent
An interesting, local way to save your passwords and other sensitive text data.

Download

portable apps AdwCleaner
A small portable app tool that will help cleanse your system quickly and easily.

Download | Full review

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Portable App Suites

PortableApps.com Suite
A launcher interface for all apps from PortableApps.com.

Download | Full review

SysInternals Suite
For administrators and technicians: All SysInternals troubleshooting utilities rolled into one ZIP file.

Download

NirLauncher
A collection of over 100 portable freeware Windows system tools, all by NirSoft.

Download | Full review

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System Tools

7-Zip
A file archiver supporting ZIP, as well as the powerful 7z format and more. Packaged by PortableApps.com.

Download | Full review

Zscreen
A screenshot portable app with numerous file handling options. No portable download, see link for instructions.

Download | Full review

Zip2Fix
A tool for extracting undamaged files from a corrupted ZIP file.

Download | Full review

Recuva
A tool for undeleting files, from makes of Ccleaner.

Download | Full review

SpaceSniffer
A tool for visualizing disk usage. Find out what’s hogging all that space.

Download | Full review

Everything
An ultra-fast search utility — searches filenames only, does not index content.

Download | Full review

CCleaner
Cleans up any system by getting rid of unneeded files and other junk.

Download | Full review

TeamViewer
The golden standard for remote control.

Download | Full review

Portable Keyboard Layout
Use an alternative keyboard layout (Colemak, Dvorak)? Take it with you.

Download | Full review

must have portable apps GetFolderSize
Used for determining the size of folders and subfolders on a drive.

Download | Full review

Process Explorer
Windows Task Manager, on steroids. Made by Sysinternals, now a part of Microsoft.

Download | Full review

Camstudio
Screen-recording software, packaged by PortableApps.com.

Download | Full review

Snaptimer
A keyboard-friendly countdown timer.

Download | Full review

Clipcube
A tiny clipboard history monitor.

Download | Full review

portable apps BareTail
A tool for system admins, used for viewing logfiles, like tail on Linux.

Download

CPU-Z
Helps you take a glance at your system specifications with ease.

Download | Full review

HijackThis
The best Windows tool portable app for generating reports for and removing registry and startup entries. Recommended for experienced users.

Download | Full review

Soft2Base
Helps you keep some of the most popular Windows applications up to date.

Download | Full review

Unassoc
The easiest way to remove filetype associations in Windows.

Download | Full review

Universal Extractor
A tool that helps you make other applications run portably.

Download

Defraggler
Another excellent portable defragmentation tool.

Download | Full review

Speccy
An advanced system information tool for your PC to help you find out what’s inside your computer.

Download | Full review

ClipTrap
Automatically monitor and log the contents of your clipboard.

Download | Full review

CrystalDiskMark Portable
One of the simplest ways to benchmark your disk for read/write speeds.

Download

GeekUninstaller
Have a sticky application that won’t uninstall? Let GeekUninstaller portable app remove it for you.

Download | Full review

Linux Live USB Creator
Easily create a bootable Live USB with tons of Linux distrubutions available.

Download | Full review

Xleaner
Clean out your Windows system and free yourself of temporary and other junk files.

Download | Full review

namebench
Find the fastest DNS server with point-and-click ease.

Download | Full review

Xinorbis
Easy way to visualize and analyze any disk under Windows.

Download | Full review

xpy
Allows you to tweak Windows and change settings that are completely under the hood.

Download

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Video Portable Apps

VLC Player
A “do-it-all” free, open-source video player. This portable app can also play audio.

Download | Full review

VirtualDub
A tool for editing and encoding videos, with support for batch-processing.

Download | Full review

Splayer
A visually striking, multi-format video player, with subtitle auto-download. Tiny link for portable version.

Download | Full review

Avidemux
A video editor designed for simple tasks such as cutting, filtering, and encoding.

Download

Media Player Classic
Very lightweight, an all-around media player for comes bundled with popular codec packages.

Download | Full review

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Web and FTP

Filezilla
A powerful, open-source FTP client.

Download | Full review

Opera Portable
An awesome browser that gets too little love. Official installer supports portable option.

Download | Full review

Google Chrome
Google’s Web browser, packaged by PortableApps.com.

Download | Download eBook

must have portable apps Firefox
If you don’t use Chrome, you are probably using Firefox. Packaged by PortableApps.com.

Download | Full review

best portable apps Tor Browser
A bundle of Tor and Vidalia to help you browse anonymously and explore “deep web” onions with the look and feel of Firefox.

Download | Full review

uTorrent Portable
Simply the best torrent client out there.

Download

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Disclaimer: All portable apps listed were thoroughly reviewed. MakeUseOf is not responsible for any damage and/or data loss
that might result from use of any of the above mentioned apps.

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