How it Works
- When you find an app that you like, click "Add This App".
- When finished adding apps, click "Download Your Apps"
- Your apps will be downloaded in a single ".zip" file.
There is no limit to the number of apps that you can add as long as the total file size
is less than 50 MB. If your download exceeds 50 MB, download your apps, then you can come back for more.
App-Stick is only about freeware, no "shareware", trialware or demos and the like.
What Is a Portable App?
A portable app is a computer program that you can carry around with you on a USB flash drive (a "stick") and use on any Windows computer. When your stick is plugged in, you have access to your software and personal data just as you would on your own PC. And when you unplug the device, none of your personal data is left behind on the PC.
From a technical point of view this means that the app is not "installed" in the usual Windows sense. All of the app's data (e.g. your personal settings for the app) are stored only with the app, usually within the app's folder. If you put the app's folder onto your USB stick, then all that data will be carried with you on the stick.
Note: the apps in our collection are claimed by their creators as "portable" in this sense, but we cannot guarantee that this is the case. Also, see below for general instructions."
In an effort to "eat our own dogfood", we have developed most of the software for App-Stick from a 2GB stick with portable applications (XAMPP, PSPad, FileZilla, Firefox,...). As a result, we can plug that stick into any of our computers and get to work immediately. We love it!
Why are these applications free?Most of these applications have been developed as Open Source Software, free to use and modify under the GNU license. Most of these projects accept donations to help support the efforts of programmers and overhead of developing and hosting them on the internet.
Can any PC application be used on a stick?
No. Most applications rely on the particular PC on which they are installed. Portable applications are designed to avoid getting threaded into a particular PC. A portable app should write no data to the PC or its registry; all relevant data should be written to the stick on which the application resides.
General InstructionsMany of the apps in our collection are "ready to go" as portable apps. Some examples:
There are a few apps in our collection (e.g. PStart and ubspawn) which help you organize the apps you put on your stick. If you use more than 2 or 3 apps you should consider using one of the programs also.
Disclaimer
We have spent considerable time and effort to ensure that our collection of apps contain no malware or adware, but we cannot guarantee this and we are not responsible for any harm these apps may do to your computer system. You should always be running an antivirus program on your system and keep it up to date. If you find any malware on any of these apps, please contact us right away.
We cannot guarantee that these apps are truly portable. If you find that any of these apps are not truly portable, in the sense that they leave traces behind on host computers, please contact us right away.
Recently we deleted from our system a few apps which turned out to be "trialware" and which expired after a certain amount of time, even though they were advertised as freeware. If you discover any such app in our collection, please contact us.
Many of these apps have "pro" or "deluxe" versions which are not free. We know of a few such apps that employ "nagware", usually in the form of annoying popups. Please let us know about any such apps, and we'll consider removing them from our collection on a case-by-case basis, depending on how annoying they really are.