List of portable software

For the purposes of this list, a portable application is software that can be used from portable storage devices such as USB flash drives, digital audio players, PDAs^[1] or external hard drives. To be considered for inclusion, an application must be executable on multiple computers from removable storage without installation, and without writing settings or data onto a computer's non-removable storage. This includes modified portable versions of non-portable applications.

Bundles

Launchers

Development

Scripting languages

Portable Python
Portable NSIS Version
Portable AutoIt
Portable AutoHotkey (zip file)
Portable Perl (Strawberry Perl Portable Version)

Compilers

IDEs

Alice IDE
Portable Eclipse
Portable Code::Blocks (needs MinGW installed, which is portable too)
Portable Dev-C++
Hackety Hack, which is an educational version of Ruby
SharpDevelop Portable

Setup creators

Nullsoft Scriptable Install System Portable (PortableApps.com format)

Visual mapping/productivity tools

XMIND

Graphics

3D modeling and rendering

Anim8or – Free 3D modeling and animating software.
Blender:
- BlenderPortable
- Blender Pocket
- XBlender^[2]

Animation

Graphic editors

ArtRage
Artweaver
Dia
EVE
Fotografix
GIMP:
- GIMP Portable VS 2008 is the Gimp portable version of Gimp on Windows platforms (Windows XP, Vista, NT Server 2003, NT Server 2008)
- Portable Gimp – for Mac OS X
- X-Gimp
- X-GimpShop
Inkscape:
- X-Inkscape
- Portable Inkscape – for Mac OS X
IrfanView
Pixia
Tux Paint

Icon editors

@icon sushi
GIMP – Supports reading and writing Windows ICO files.
IcoFX
IrfanView – Supports converting graphic file formats into Windows ICO files.

Viewers

FastStone Image Viewer: supports screen capture, multiple pix into a single PDF
Irfanview
XnView

Document-based

Office and publishing

Editors

Personal notes

Personal Knowbase

Educational

Games

Emulators

DOSBox – MS-DOS emulator
FCE Ultra – Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) emulator
MAME – Multiple Arcade Machine emulator:
- MAMEUI32
VisualBoyAdvance – Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance emulator
ZSNES – Super NES emulator

Plug-in emulators

JoyToKey – Gamepad emulator

Internet

Web browsers

Email clients

Mail – for Mac OS X
Mozilla Thunderbird Portable
Modest
Pegasus Mail
Pine
Opera (has integrated Email client)
SeaMonkey
sylpheed (zip version)
The Bat! Voyager

Instant messaging

Adium – for Mac OS X
aMSN
Google Talk
Portable iChat – for Mac OS X
Miranda NG
Pidgin Portable (formerly Gaim Portable)
Psi Portable
Skype
Trillian Anywhere
Yahoo! Messenger

FTP clients

Download managers

Wget
HTTrack
Free Download Manager (installation required to create portable version)
Opera (Integrated Download Manager)

P2P file sharing

BitComet (needs msxml)
Emule
Opera (integrated torrent client)
μTorrent (latest version)
Halite
FrostWire
Limewire Portable
qBittorrent Portable
Vuze Portable

IRC

ChatZilla Note: Requires a Mozilla based browser, e.g. SeaMonkey, or Firefox.
Miranda NG
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)
Opera (Integrated Irc client)
HexChat
Portable X-Chat Aqua – for Mac OS X

RSS, Atom readers

RSSOwl (needs Java runtime environment)
Opera (Integrated RSS/Atom client)

Telnet, SSH clients

portaPuTTY
WinSCP Portable Edition – SFTP/SCP/FTP client, remote file manager, GUI

Podcast managers

Juice

Anonymity/Anti-censorship

Tor Browser Bundle

Local wikis

Miscellaneous

Ahnenblatt multilingual Genealogy software
Moka5 LivePC Engine (Portable VMware). Dynamically loads and unloads network drivers and requires administrator rights.
Mojopac portable chopped down copy of windows. Requires administrator rights.

Multimedia

File converters

CD/DVD burning

Editors

Portable Audacity – for Windows and Mac OS X
mp3DirectCut
GoldWave
VirtualDub

Audio/MIDI sequencer

Reaper has a .bat file for a USB stick installation

Networking

HTTP servers

Miscellaneous

Netcat
Proxomitron – Filtering Web Proxy
Xming
Wireshark
RealVNC

Remote desktop

Other tools

Web editors

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

Calendar management

Portable Sunbird – for Mac OS X, and Windows
Portable iCal – for Mac OS X

File management

Directory Opus by selecting the USB/U3 export option
Servant Salamander 1.52
Total Commander
X-file X-file for Windows 98SE/2K or later
XYplorer

File archivers/extractors

7-Zip
Filzip
PeaZip, for BSD, Linux and Windows
WinRAR, Portable version for Windows, still requires having a license for a regular version of WinRAR. The version number for WinRAR Unplugged is 3.8.0.1, while the latest WinRAR for Windows version is 4.11

PDF tools

Readers

Writers

Portable OpenOffice.org – for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X

Security and encryption

Password management

KeePass Portable
Password Safe

Anti-spyware/malware

Antivirus

Steganography

OpenPuff

Real-time disk/volume Encryption

FreeOTFE / FreeOTFE Explorer

System maintenance

Optimization and cleaning

CCleaner

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
Speccy – System information tool.