10 Cool and Free Portable Programs (You Need to See)

You know what's better than cool free programs?  Cool free portable programs, meaning you don't have to install them, you can just run the file  and it's good to go. Later on I can go over some reasons why I do prefer these two installed  programs, and no, they're not just for putting on your flash drive. But anyway, let's just get right  into it, I've got 11 of them in no particular order. There's quite a variety in what they  do, and while these mostly will be for Windows, many do support mult

iple operating systems. And of  course I'll put the links in the description. So let's go. Starting off with number one, for anyone  out there with a Logitech mouse, you may know that Logitech has their clunky, bloated software  for changing the settings and button bindings, but they also have a portable tool called Logitech  Onboard Memory Manager that is just one file and lets you set up profiles and buttons without  having to install anything. You can just have it save the settings onto the m

ouse itself, so it's  not even like you need to keep running the tool. I was so happy when I found out about this one.  Next up is one of my long time favorites, Bulk Rename Utility. You may have heard me talk about  it in the past, and just like the name suggests, it makes it really easy to rename as many files  as you want in pretty much every way imaginable. I know the interface looks overwhelming at first,  but it's not as complicated as it seems. You just select a bunch of files in the expl

orer at the  top, then each section at the bottom is just a different way to change the file names. But  it's not like you need to set every single one, you only have to set the ones you want to use, and  99% of the time, the basic ones are enough. For example, there's a section to replace certain  text with different text wherever it appears. There's also a section to remove characters  from the beginning or end of all the file names, or anywhere in between, and a section to add  prefixes and s

uffixes too. There's even one specifically for adding numbering in various  formats. I don't have time to go over them all, and it's not like I've used them all anyway, but  I bet it will come in handy. Just note that to get the portable version of it, you just have  to choose that option on the download page. Now before I get to number 3, I've got something else  that's really cool. Today's sponsor, Ugreen, and their brand new line of state of the art chargers,  the Nexode Pro series. For examp

le, here are the Ugreen Nexode Pro 100W and 160W chargers. The  100W charger has two USB-C and one USB-A ports, and it can indeed provide the entire 100W through  a single port. It can even charge a MacBook Pro 14" from 0 to 50% in just 27 minutes. And thanks  to Ugreen's new technology called Airpyra Tech, plus the latest GaNInfinity chips, the Nexode Pro  100W charger is so compact that it's similar in size to the regular Nexode 65W charger. Compared  to the regular Nexode 100W charger, that g

ives the Pro a 37% increase in power density. And of  course, you are able to split the 100W among all three ports to charge three devices at once,  anything from laptops to tablets or watches. As for the Nexode Pro 160W charger, it has three  USB-C and one USB-A port, and it can deliver a whopping 140W to a single port. That makes it able  to, again, in just 27 minutes, charge a larger 16" MacBook Pro from 0 to 50%. Also thanks to the  same new AirPyra Tech and GaNInfinity chips, the 160W Nexod

e Pro is similar in size to the 140W  regular Nexode charger. That's a 20% increase in power density. While still fitting in the palm of  your hand, you can charge up to four devices at once from a smartphone to a MacBook Pro, meaning  you can finally replace all those gigantic AC adapters and charging bricks. So be sure to check  out the Ugreen Nexode Pro 100 and 160W chargers, as well as the rest of the Nexode Pro series.  I'll put some links in the description you can visit to learn more. And

with all that being said,  let's continue. Alright next up, number three is a program many of you have heard of, but probably  didn't realize there's a portable version. And that is OBS Studio, the streaming software. This  one's easy to miss because on the main page, if you click one of the buttons for your operating  system, it immediately starts the download for the installer. But if you instead go to the "Download"  links at the top, you'll see more options, including one called "Download Z

ip", which  is the portable version. After extracting it, to run it, you just go into the "bin" folder,  short for binaries, then "64bit", then run the main executable, obs64.exe, and it works like  normal. Though one extra note, if you want it to store the settings in this same folder, you  have to create a file called "portable_mode.txt", and just put it there, and then it will store  the settings here too. Now, one tip I want to emphasize, which you've just seen twice now, is  that you will o

ften see software like that, where by default they offer the installer to download,  but there's an extra option for a portable version elsewhere. As you saw, sometimes it's literally  called the portable version, and other times it's often called the zip version, because all the  files are just in a zip folder, but it's the same thing. Okay, now onto number 4, we have WizTree.  This one is super cool, it lets you visually see what is taking up space on your storage drives  with just a quick gla

nce. For example, literally as I was making this video, I realized that my  Adobe After Effects cache folder was taking up almost 100 gigabytes. I also have a ton of huge  files in my downloads folder that I don't need, like a bunch of Windows ISOs I was using in past  videos. WizTree is also really fast at scanning the disks, much faster than similar old software  you may have heard of like WinDirStat, which is what I used before I found this. Alright, moving  on to number 5, we have a tool cal

led ValiDrive, which I actually made a video about a few months  ago. Basically it lets you see if your USB flash drive actually has the capacity it claims, or  if it's fake. Lately there have been USB drives sold on Amazon that claim to be a terabyte  or more, but really are just 64 gigabytes, and have their firmware hacked to show the fake  amount in Windows. This can lead to all sorts of possible file loss that I won't get into, you can  just watch the original video for details. Anyway, how

this tool works is you plug in your drive,  and then it tests a bunch of sectors throughout the drive, and it shows how much of it is real  or fake. One cool fun fact about this software is notice how absolutely tiny it is, under  100 kilobytes. That's because the creator, Steve Gibson of Gibson Research, actually wrote  the whole thing in assembly language by hand. And for those of you who know what that means, I don't  need to tell you why that's impressive. Okay, now up to number 6, we have O

penRGB. This is a  really cool program I actually use every day, and what it does is lets you control the RGB  lighting of your computer, like inside your case, and also some attached devices, like  your mouse for example. In my opinion, this is so much better than having to install  the typical software required to control it from your motherboard manufacturer, which is often  extremely bloated and full of unnecessary junk. OpenRGB might not be able to do as much fancy  stuff, but if you just w

ant basic effects, it works fine. I personally only use it for the most  basic use of controlling my PC case lights, but it does apparently support lots of other devices  too, so definitely worth checking out. Alright, on to number 7 is HxD, a free hex editor tool.  Obviously this one is more for advanced users, and I admit I've only used this a handful  of times, but if you know what you're doing, it can come in handy for certain situations.  Usually this is when you might want to look at the r

aw data of some file, like maybe if you  have a file with corrupted headers. With this, you might be able to see what is the problem. One  example is this WAV audio file from a project I was working on, that had a weird popping sound at  the start. And if you open it in the hex editor, turns out that somehow the file got a partly  duplicated header. You can see this riff bit twice when compared to the good file. In this case, you  can basically just see the same if you open it up simply in Notep

ad, but sometimes the hex values  can help you spot things. Ok, on to number 8, we have OpenSpeedTest. I made a video about this a  little while ago, but it's an open source program that really makes it easy to test your local  network speed, like between computers within your own home. In addition to downloading through  the various app stores, you can also just download an EXE. And when it's running, it allows any  local devices to connect to it and run a speed test just through a web interfac

e, without having  to install anything on the other device. It even tells you what address to use. This one could be  helpful for diagnosing network issues, or making sure the connection between two devices is fast  enough for doing something like streaming a video from your computer to phone via wifi or whatever.  Alright, we still got a few more, and number 9 is Visual Studio Code Portable Mode. Visual Studio  Code is a program created by Microsoft, made for, well, coding. Though, not to be co

nfused with the  much bigger program called Visual Studio. VS Code isn't a whole IDE or integrated development  environment like regular Visual Studio, but rather more of an advanced text editor that  can also run certain types of code like Python scripts. Like other software, it usually is  installed, but if you go to the downloads page, you'll see a zip download option. With this,  there is one more step to use the portable mode, which is to create a "data" folder within the  main directory. T

hen it will see that, and will put all the settings and stuff into that folder.  Otherwise, it will go into the AppData folder, just like the regular installed version. Also be  aware that it won't auto-update like the installed version. We're now up to number 10, which is  HWMonitor, short for Hardware Monitor. The name is pretty self-explanatory, it simply lets  you see a whole bunch of information from your computer's hardware sensors and other hardware  info. This includes stuff like the var

ious core temperatures of your CPU and other devices, or  the current clock speed of your CPU cores. Plus, it can show you stuff like GPU, CPU, and memory  utilization. You can probably imagine cases where this might be useful. Okay, finally for number 11,  I'm just going to combine a whole bunch into one, and those would be all the tools in the Microsoft  Sysinternals suite, and any tools from Nearsoft. There are way too many from these to even mention,  literally hundreds, and many of you prob

ably know about these anyway, so I'll keep it quick.  I've made a dedicated video about both of them if you want to see more specifics though. The  Sysinternal suite is a bunch of tools published by Microsoft that are super useful, especially for  troubleshooting, though they can be very advanced. A couple popular examples would be Process  Explorer and Process Monitor, which I've used on many occasions. Then there are all the tools  from Nir Sofer of Nirsoft, which are a ton of random tools eac

h dedicated to some specific task  in Windows. Some of my favorites are USB Log View, for monitoring the USB devices that are being  plugged in or unplugged, and Full Event View Log, where you can see every event from all Windows  Event Viewer logs in one place, for when maybe you want to search for some error logs, but don't know  what category it would be in under Event Viewer. I'll put the links to the videos I made before  about these in the description as well. Okay, now that you know a bun

ch more cool portable programs,  you might be wondering why you might want to use these versions instead of the installed ones.  Once again, this is actually a topic I went into in more detail in a separate video, but there  are two main big reasons for me at least. First, it's great for software that you might only use  once in a blue moon, but you don't want to install it and further bloat up your computer. With this,  you can just keep a bunch of portable programs in some folder, and they jus

t sit there until they're  needed. The other main reason is for whenever you get a new computer or reformat your current one.  Any software you have that's portable is one less program you need to reinstall and reconfigure  to how it was before. And it's great if you use a cloud drive to sync files between computers,  like Dropbox or OneDrive, because any changes to preferences and stuff will update across all your  devices too. So for these reasons, whenever I go to download a program, I usuall

y check to see if  there's a portable version, and decide whether it makes more sense to get that one based on how I  expect to use it. And now you should be even more well equipped with these cool new tools, and you  don't even need to install any of them. I would be curious which of these are your favorite, or maybe  you think I should have included other tools, we can talk about that down in the comments.  Thanks again to Ugreen for sponsoring, definitely check out their new Nexode Pro 100 an

d 160 watt  chargers, and the rest of the Ugreen Nexode Pro series, links in the description. If you want to  keep watching, what I'll do is put links to the videos with all those tools from Sysinternals  and Nirsoft, you can just click on those right there if you're interested. So thanks so much  for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.