Can someone tell me about portable apps

wigster · Thursday at 13:52

Do you need to have anything installed on the flashdrive to install portable apps? Or is it as simple as downloading the portable app and installing it on the flash drive?

wigster · Thursday at 14:16

Thanks I had watched a YouTube video where the guy said to install a app.

wigster · Thursday at 14:46

Tetras said:
I think sometimes when someone says portable they mean that it'll run on different platforms, rather than it'll run from a flash drive, so that's the only reason I could imagine they're telling you to install it.

I think the couple of videos I watched was telling you to go to the website portable apps.com and install their software in order for you to run portable apps, that's why I was getting confused.

wigster · Thursday at 15:01

Tetras said:
Ah, I see. I was thinking of portable versions of software like CPU-Z and HWINFO which you can just extract to your flash drive and double click the exe.

Ok so would it be better to use that site and install their software or just use the portable versions of the software ie Gimp/VLC etc..

wigster · Thursday at 15:11

Yes I was wondering how trust worthy they really are, Hopefully someone will pop in and say they have used their platform and apps.

looking at some websites like Gimp they point you towards the portable apps website if you want to use a portable version of Gimp.

wigster · Thursday at 16:21

demonix said:
That's just for apps you download from their site as they would require the launcher to be installed on the drive itself

Anything from a site that has a separate "portable" version of the application in question can just be extracted (because those are normally some kind of compressed archive) to the drive and run without issue or any other program.

I understand now, at first I didn't know the site was seperate I thought it was just hosting the portable apps. So what it comes down to is if that site can be trusted

wigster · Thursday at 18:23

nade said:
This takes me back a number of years!

I did use to use them quite a lot. Was helpful having portable versions of both Chrome or Firefox with common favourites handy for work. That was when my job was basically working between sites/offices and not having a laptop. I basically used a pen drive with the "portable" apps in a folder and ran them directly off the USB drive.

But I will still download a standalone/portable version of an application if it's available on a website to save any unnecessary installations on a machine.

Back then I mostly used the https://portableapps.com/ website to get any apps.

Thats great might start using that platform for the portable apps.

wigster · Thursday at 20:06

hyperseven said:
It wasn't to install ThinApp so you can make your own portable apps, was it?

No it was a video of putting apps on a flash drive but it was for portableapps.com, There is quite a few of them.

wigster · 2024-07-19T10:03:38+0100

mrk said:
The "installer" on portableapps.com for portable apps isn't n installer, it just unpacks the portable app directory to wherever you want it unpacked, that's all really. It should not be called "installer" as it can confuse people.

When I watched a couple of videos it also looked like you could also add apps straight from their platform and also delete and arrange the apps.

At least I understand it all now.