The Portable Freeware Collection Forums

Thirtyfour (34) portable application launchers on this site were tested. The green highlighted app names are new or updated versions, mainly for my purposes only. Usage tests for these apps were not posted before although I had tested many of them some time ago.

Ouch -- this is my least favorite of your tests as I have so many ingrained opinions about what I need (and they are on the higher end of resource usage) and can't easily switch. Sigh.

Still, of the programs that I have running 24/7, a lightweight launcher program probably makes the most sense.

webfork wrote:Ouch -- this is my least favorite of your tests as I have so many ingrained opinions about what I need (and they are on the higher end of resource usage) and can't easily switch. Sigh.

Still, of the programs that I have running 24/7, a lightweight launcher program probably makes the most sense.

EDIT: where's portableapps platform?

webfork wrote:where's portableapps platform?

I never used the portableapps launcher so it wasn't tested, but I didn't include any other dedicated launchers either. However, I do use a lot of portableapps programs since any launcher can run them.

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edit 10-05-17:
I looked again at the portableapps launcher and it installs everything to the application's folder with the default settings. There could be a way to change that, but these tests apply to launchers that can launch programs from any location out-of-the-box.

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You are right, it's not easy to switch once hundreds of apps are set up. I use PSMenu and I'm launching over 2,000 apps on it. Just realized my first error. I need to retest PSMenu since I tested the one I use with all those apps configured. I will retest and then update the charts.

Some app launchers at the mid/upper range that I thought might be sluggish were surprisingly snappy. Some of them are 8Start Launcher, SideSlide, Launchy, Keybreeze, and Find and Run Robot (FARR). Almost all of the launchers on the lower usage scale are fast. Most at 100 MB or below were acceptable on my system. At over 100 MB, the sluggishness became noticeable. There are 6 that were very sluggish and all those were at the top end.


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Corrected spreadsheet and chart. PSMenu was retested with 5 apps configured instead of 2000. Also found a couple of typos that were corrected. I didn't replace the original charts since this gives a good idea of how many apps it takes to significantly affect total usage. However, most of that usage, at least for PSMenu, comes from scanning the configured apps on startup. It takes approx 1-2 minutes for all 2000 or so apps in its config file to load on my system, but after that RAM is only about 2 MB, which is about the same as when PSMenu is configured for only 5 apps. Of course, that is going to fluctuate whenever the launcher is used. RAM and VM would be the most important measurements in this case. It's important to look at the spreadsheet numbers and not rely on chart positions since the chart totals all the RAM usage categories for each app, which in some cases may be irrelevant or relatively unimportant. Some launchers are floating, meaning that apps must be launched from the UI, some primarily use hotkeys or text, and some reside in the system tray. Total usage depends on launcher type, and that affects usage differently. The only way to fairly compare the different categories would be to test each type separately focusing on the relevant parameters, or if using a single test, to use all three parameters and group them by type, as was done in this case.

Impressive!