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Running Portable Apps without the Launcher UI

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PortableGood
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Running Portable Apps without the Launcher UI

The following works great: Running the Portable Apps launcher, and then selecting a specific portable app to run.

I'm wondering if it is equally as easy to run Portable Apps without the launcher UI.

Here are my questions:

1. Is it possible to run a Portable App (and keep it portable) without having the Portable Apps launcher UI running? For example, to run portable app ABC, can you just run ABCPortable.exe (where "ABCPortable.exe" is any of the Portable Apps available through the PortableApps launcher)?

2. Will doing so keep it portable (removing registry changes, etc)?

3. If the ABCPortable.exe is run from a shortcut, does the "Start in" folder for the shortcut need to be where ABCPortable.exe is stored?

4. Is there any difference in running ABCPortable.exe this way vs. running it via the Portable Apps launch UI?

John T. Haller
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Directly

You may run AppNamePortable.exe directly and it will continue to work portably. The portable app may not find your portable Documents etc folders as those are dictated from the platform. The apps won't be updated, of course, unless you do it manually. A third party menu can be used but we don't support the menu or its configuration and it could cause issues if the menu messes with environment variables or command line parameters. Third party updaters should not be used as we have found they often bypass the portable installer. The installer contains the logic on how an app should be updated. Bypassing the PortableApps.com Installer can cause breaking of the app, breaking of add-ons, security issues, and loss of user data. I've personally seen third party utilities extract files and result in broken configurations that leave personal data behind on the local machine.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

PortableGood
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Thanks John!

Thanks John!

I use the PortableApps.com launcher for almost everything.

But I want to do things like add portable apps to the Send To menu and assign file associations to portable apps. From what you wrote, it sounds like it is fine to do that, even when the PortableApps.com launcher is not running.

Did I interpret what you wrote correctly?

John T. Haller
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Yeah

You're good in that case. I do the same thing. Since you're running it locally and with the platform sometimes, the app is probably already configured for your portable documents directory anyway. And it will be updated. And sending things as a Send To is fine as all the apps are configured to properly pass documents, etc on to the bundled app.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

PortableGood
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Thanks John. Great answer.

Thanks John. Great answer. Much appreciated.

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