Awesome Portable App Collections

Curated List of sites with launchers , collections, catalogs and lists of portable and freeware apps. There are also standalone launchers if you want to build and customize your own collection and extra resources.

Contents

• Portable App Collections with Launchers
• Websites with catalogs of portable apps
• Application Launchers No Apps Included
• Miscellaneous
• Abandoned or Discontinued

Portable App Collections with Launchers

• PortableApps.com (PAF)
  1100+ categorized portable packages. Over 1.1 billion downloads so far.
• SyMenu Suite
  1744+ freeware portable apps, The largest program suite worldwide. A portable menu launcher and a Start Menu replacer to organize your applications quickly and easily. On top of that SyMenu is able to automatically index any application installed on the host pc. But the real power of SyMenu unfolds when you approach its integrated large and daily growing suites of freeware programs contained within the SyMenu Suite. The SyMenu launcher also includes all of the portables included in the Nirsoft collection.
• NirLauncher
  more than 200 portable freeware utilities for Windows, all of them developed for NirSoft Web site during the last few years. You can also add packages to the launcher such as the SysInternals Suite and aslo integrate Nirsoft protables into the SyMenu suite. If you only want th eportabkes but not the launcher, checkout the Nirsot Catalog below, for individual portables but without the launher.
• winPenPack
  Open source software environment comprised of several portable applications grouped into suites (portable applications are applications that are modified to be executed directly from a USB flash drive, without prior installation).
• Appetizer - The Open Source Dock
  This is a free application launcher, or dock, for Windows. It allows organizing your shortcuts and folders into a convenient dock. The app is open source, which means that it's free and will remain so. It is entirely customizable and is available in multiple languages.

Websites with catalogs of portable apps

• The Portable Freeware Collection
  2833+ Portable and Freeware Apps. Very well categorized.
• NirSoft
  Unique collection of small and useful freeware utilities, all of them developed by Nir Sofer.
• MajorGeeks
  Small, home-based technology website that was founded in 2001 and focused on only the best, safe, personally tested software available on the internet. See also the Nirsoft site above.
• Portapps - Applications
  A catalog containing a growing list of 54+ applications.
• Pendrive Apps
  Personally reviewed free portable apps & games, by the authors of Pendrive Apps. Here you will find some of the best free portable games, software and applications for Windows. These are useful tools and utilities that can both be stored and then run directly from a flashdrive, thumbdrive, pendrive or other commonly used removable storage device.

Pages with lists of useful portable apps

• SnapFiles - The Top 100 Portable Apps
  This Top 100 list of portable apps is based on the number of downloads a program has accumulated over the past few weeks on SnapFiles. All of these apps are portable - they don't need to be installed. Just run the executable.
• Make Use Of - 100 Portable Apps for Your USB Stick for Windows and macOS
  Make Use Of has collected the best portable apps, but there are so many more out there. Grab your spare flash drive or empty cloud storage and fill it up with this mega-list of 100 portable apps. You'll find tools to satisfy every software need, categorized by type.

Application Launchers (No Apps Included)

I've included this category as well, as I feel those launcher are good choices for launching and organizing both portable, and installable applications.

• RocketDock
  RocketDock is a classic app launcher loved by millions of people for almost 20 years. It lets you zoom through your shortcuts like a rocket with its buttery smooth interface. You can drag your favorite apps, files, and folders onto the dock to have quick access to them, then personalize with different skins, icons, and effects to match your desktop.
• Appetizer
  A free application launcher, or dock, for Windows. It allows organizing your shortcuts and folders into a convenient dock. Open source, which means that it's free and will remain so. Customizable and available in many languages.
• ASuite
  Simple launcher designed to run portable applications, you can start anything this is runnable (software, documents and other file types) from removable storage media (USB keys, hard drives, iPods, etc...).
• Launchy
  Free cross-platform utility designed to help you forget about your start menu, the icons on your desktop, and even your file manager. Indexes the programs in your start menu and can launch your documents, project files, folders, and bookmarks with just a few keystrokes!
  

Miscellaneous

• Wikipedia - List of portable software
  According to WikiPedia the definition of a Portable Application is:
  A portable application is software that can be used from portable storage devices such as USB flash drives, digital audio players, PDAs 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.

• StartKey
  Microsoft’s plan is to provide a complete suite of tools for consumers and developers to help push the portable computing paradigm into the mainstream. In addition to USB flash drives, StartKey technology could work on other flash memory types like SD cards, or any other new storage format of the week. An SDK will be provided to developers so they can enable their own applications to plug into the platform and go portable.

Abandoned or Discontinued

• U3
  U3 was a joint venture between SanDisk and M-Systems, producing a proprietary method of launching Windows software from special USB flash drives. Flash drives adhering to the U3 specification are termed "U3 smart drives". U3 smart drives come preinstalled with the U3 Launchpad. Applications that comply with U3 specifications are allowed to write files or registry information to the host computer, but they must remove this information when the flash drive is ejected. Customizations and settings are instead stored with the application on the flash drive. - More info on WikiPedia