So are all PortableApps.com apps "stealthy" meaning that they leave behind no cache or any traces of the app's usage on a computer after they are closed? And that if they do leave cache it would be in the same folder as the installation directory which is presumably on the flash drive?
That's the philosophy PortableApps has, but does that mean apps with its extension and apps submitted on the site by developers all follow this philosophy?
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For the PortableApps guidelines please see what is a portable app?
To sum it up, we require that our apps do not leave files, folders or registry entries behind on the PC except those that are created by Windows (or any other apps you have installed that record program data).
This means that there are definitely traces of an app's usage left on the PC, but these are things that we cannot remove such as Window's recently used list, an antivirus's scan history, or a firewalls allow/deny settings, without damaging the data in Windows or another program (which is something we are against doing).
As far as apps with extensions we can't make any guarantees. Most extensions (if they are made properly) will be portable, but there will always be those that aren't.
We also can't guarantee portability on apps in the beta testing subforum. While you can usually be sure the more popular ones are portable, there are many many more submitted that just haven't been tested properly, or have never been updated based on testing feedback. Also since the process of making an app portable is entirely human-driven there is also the chance for someone to make a typo or just outright miss something in checking the app's portability.
On rare occasions you may even find an official app where the base app has changed the way it does things and it has been missed in the portable packaging.
Thank you. One more questions: do all/most of the apps point to the installation directory? For example, I currently have two "profiles"--a desktop version of all the portable apps and a "portable" version of all the portable apps. The only difference is that the desktop version has all the portable apps pointing their cache directories or any directories they use (such as the default directory to save a file) to a folder on the internal hard drive.
As for the laptop version, I might have to transfer that version between flash drives and external hard drives. If I do this, what will happen to the directories that the portable apps point to? For example, if I transfer the portable apps from my flash drive to my external hard drive and then use the external hard drive on another computer, will the directories ever point to the other computer? Or will they all automatically point to some folder where the portable app was installed by default?
The base app determines exactly what we can and can't do in terms of portability.
Where we can we redirect the app (using settings or command line options) to store all of its data in the AppNamePortable\Data\ directory. Where those options are unavailable in the app the PortableApps Launcher instead backs up any files/folders/registry entries on the host PC, copies in its own settings, then on close it will copy its settings back to the \Data directory and restore the local version's settings.
The PortableApps Launcher also handles drive letter and path changes, so if you copy a PortableApp from one drive to another, even if that drive gets assigned a new drive letter or you have changed the path (eg. X:\PortableApps\MyAppPortable to X:\MyAppPortable) the app should update its settings to reflect the move just fine. There may be some rare apps that don't handle path changes well (but these apps will warn you on launch if there may be issues) but all of our official apps do handle drive letter changes properly.