Portable apps have a huge place in my geeky heart simply because they are quite numerous (if you don’t believe me, check out the Best Portable Apps here). They don’t modify the registry, and can be used in different Windows machines (though there are portable apps for Linux as well). Up until recently though, maintaining portable apps was not pleasant for me. I’d have to go into Windows Explorer and click on the executable to launch the program every time, and if there was an update to the program, I’d have to download the program and “install” it all over again. Sound familiar?
If your answer is yes, you should probably take a look at the Portable Apps Platform, currently on version 10.0, available from the same site that offers portable versions of popular programs. You can download the Platform from this link (which leads to download links from Sourceforge). Why would this trump the current way you’re maintaining your portable apps? I thought you’d never ask.
Start Menu For Application Organization & Launch
If you have quite a few portable apps (even our suggestions from our Best Portable Apps reach 50+), having a way to access them is probably optimal. I used to create a toolbar in the Windows taskbar, but as the list of portable apps grew and grew, the toolbar would take its sweet time loading, which means it would freeze all the time. The Portable Apps Platform is a great way to launch one of your portable programs without any such hassle.
You can select for the Platform to sort your programs by category, by alphabetical order, or either with favorites and recent apps displayed first, something that the program calls “Smart” organizing.
Other options include themes and other preferential settings, e.g. whether to display only open-source applications, whether to disable the scrollbar, etc.
Update Existing Portable Apps The Easy Way
Portable applications are usually in heavy development, and you probably don’t want to miss important updates on the applications you love. If you don’t want to check for updates on a program manually and have to do this 50+ time for all of your portable applications, the Portable Apps Platform will also be a big time-saver. You can select to update on Platform startup and even update to the beta (less stable) versions of your preferred programs.
Since I have checked the option for the Platform to check for updates on startup, it notifies me of updates every time I click on the Portable Apps Platform in my taskbar.
As you can see, the Platform displays information about the download file size as well as a brief description of the app in case you have forgotten. If you simply do not want in on a specific update, you can simply click Cancel and be well on your way to seeing the Platform start menu.
Obtain New Portable Apps
Another neat feature from the Platform is that you can browse through the portable offerings of the mother site, PortableApps.com, without even needing a web browser. Simply click on Apps from the start menu, and you’ll see several options, from which you will want to click on Get More Apps.
Then you will see a neat list with all the portable apps from the site’s Directory, along with descriptions, download file size and installation space needed.
Since the list is quite extensive, it’s times like this that you will find our Best Portable Apps page (updated recently by the way) handy.
If you use portable apps frequently, you’ll find the Portable Apps Platform quite useful. It’s definitely something you should have in your portable app arsenal!
Can’t get enough of portable apps? Check out some awesome portable games, cool portable app launchers, our editor’s favorite portable apps, check out other portable app suites or learn how to create your own portable apps! Let us know your favorite portable apps in the comments below!
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I’m sorry if the question sounds rather stupid, but… What exactly is a portable app? :)
And why would it be better than, say, cloud applications, which don’t need to be installed?
Simply put, portable apps are programs that don’t need to be installed. Cloud apps would depend, to a certain degree at least, on internet connectivity. They might also require a browser to be launched from.
Portable apps are useful because you can carry them around on a USB stick and run them directly from there on another computer without installing. If I’m nto mistaken, the PortableApps.com specification also states that their portable apps do not leave any traces on the computer they are run from. Some portable apps (from other sources, for example) might leave some trace.
I basically like using portable apps to have less stuff installed on my computer and easily carry my preferred apps to use on other computers.
Hope this helps
The best way to explain this would be to describe what a normal installed app is.. so when you double-click an exe (or msi) file and install an app some of the things it does (or could do) are :
- write values to the registry
- inject library files, other system files into the Windows system folder
- add items to the windows startup folder to start up each time you log into your Windows OS
- might come bundled with other toolbars, or software
- potential clash/conflict with other similar software
- startingup various services, etc. etc.
the point being that in many cases you contribute to the Windows OS starting up more slowly and/or performing more slowly/sluggish over time. Ofcourse, if you have a beast of a machine and don’t care much then you’ll hardly notice such slowdowns (unless it is over an extraordinarily large amount of time).
With portable apps, for the most part everything “installs” into just one folder locally on your computer that you can copy over to your USB drive and take with you (so for example if you use Pidgin portable chat – which integrates gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc. – and you copy it over to a usb drive you can take your contacts, your chat history etc. where you go… same logic with portable email apps. You could even take various anti-spyware/malware programs this way and be sure to scan a potentially virus infect computer (for example at a public place) before working on it..
with cloud, yes you could do this but then i think you’re limited to what apps you’re ‘cloud service provider’ puts on there because you sure as heck wouldn’t have access to installing whatever you want… so much more limited choice of apps to use (again this could be fine if you’re the sort of person who has a set choice of apps and doesn’t want to go outside of it.. but there are many that do). Secondly, some are also a little wary of their information being available “in the cloud” a place i won’t call ‘public’ because yes it’s restricted, but still it’s out of your control when it’s not on your local computer.
So anyway.. there you have it.. some points from my side. Hope it helps :)
By any chance does this violate copyright acts?
-Kelvin
“Most applications published by PortableApps.com are released under open source licenses. They may be freely copied, redistributed and modified within the terms of the licenses applying to each product. ” – PortableApps’ Copyright disclaimer page (http://portableapps.com/about/copyrights_and_trademarks).
I used to use portable apps and it was good software to carry around on your jump drive I forgot about them im going to be using it again with my new flash drive
SOLD!!!!! now where do I find the download button?
SOLD to the man with the funny hat!!!! Now where do I find the download button?
put it on usb and it works awesome
Portable Apps Platform is awesome. I use it with my laptop that has an ssd. I find I can save space on my ssd by using portable apps, apps load a little slower but not slow enough to make it unbearable.
Thanks, Very nice…. Fire_dragon…..
Portableapp is just what I need! Thank you Ms Wong. I shall be following you on Twitter.