guinness's favorites (641)

Audacity is a multi-track sound recorder and editor with support for most audio formats and sophisticated effects such as noise removal and studio reverb. Users can record live audio, compress or convert file types, as well as cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.

Cross platform with clients available for Mac and Linux.

Alternatively, Audacity Portable and an outdated X-Audacity are also available.

BulkFileChanger allows you to gather a list of files via drag-and-drop, explorer, or wild card searches. Users can then execute a command, change properties (time/date/hidden/read-only etc.), export file list, or copy/move files to another location.

FirePasswordViewer recovers login passwords stored by Firefox such as username and password for every website visited by the user. If the user chooses to save their password, FirePasswordViewer can recover these secrets and export them to HTML. If the master password is enabled, the program will require this to open the encrypted information.

The program is an interface for the FirePassword tool.

Note the main website download link has switched to an encrypted installer. Linking to softpedia.

Q-Dir is a quad-pane file explorer that supports favorites, file/color filtering, export to XLS/CSV/TXT/HTML, screen magnifier, quick preview etc.

Alternately, Q-Dir Portable at PortableApps.com automatically switches between 32/64-bit and is approved by the publisher.

NOTE: Recent press about CCleaner indicates it may represent a privacy concern.

CCleaner is a feature-rich system optimization and privacy tool. The program cleans unused, temporary and log files from your system, as well as traces of online activities such as Internet history and flash cookies. The program contains startup controls for Windows, major internet browsers and context menu entries. Includes a separate registry cleaner, duplicate search, system restore tool and can wipe both deleted files and drive free space for security.

A 64-bit version is available (within the folder). Monitoring functions are only available in the pro version.

Additional cleaner rules can be using an unofficial set of community-developed set. It should be noted that many of these rules are alpha and the developers will not provide support for these rules, a thread in the users forum is dedicated to supporting the add-on rules.

Alternatively, ccPortable is also available.

Bitvise SSH Client (formerly Tunnelier) is a fast, secure FTP and terminal client with a variety of "tunnel" options to create secure connections, similar to a VPN. The program can forward Windows file shares over SSH, an FTP-to-SFTP protocol bridge, port forwarding and more. See forum discussion for adding secure FTP to existing portable software.

Includes support for single-click remote desktop forwarding for graphical server access, vt100, strong auto-reconnect and a scriptable console-mode SFTP client. Integrated SOCKS and HTTP proxy are available for dynamic forwarding. Security measures include wide encryption protocol support including public key exchange and optional integrated compression. Supports profiles and optional encryption of local passwords.

Functional in 64-bit.

WinSCP is a feature-rich tabbed file transfer client with a variety of views including single-window, dual-pane and tree view interfaces. The program supports standard FTP as well as secure connections using WebDav, S3, SSH, SSL/TLS and legacy SCP. The program can search, perform directory synchronization between local and remote, change properties, and edit text/binary files.

Includes support for scripting, task automation, various authentication tools, proxy, SSH tunnels and IPv6.

Alternatively, WinSCP Portable is multilingual and supports PuTTY Portable.
An outdated X-WinSCP, packaged in winPenPack's format, is also available.

Windows System Control Center (WSCC) allows you to install, update, execute and organize the utilities from various system utility suites. The program either works as an interface or as downloader. The program can work with both utilities suites downloaded or can dynamically grab and run the programs via a web connection. The included Update Manager can check for newer versions of the utilities already installed and can download and install the missing items.

Works with Windows Sysinternals and NirSoft Utilities suites, but also highlights Windows' own utilities.

Note: The setup packages are downloaded from the author's website.

FontViewOK creates a quick visual overview on all fonts installed or from a folder. Includes printing with print preview function, a list of all fonts from a specific folder, dual font preview for quick comparisons of fonts, as well as ability to modify size, style and color.

CpuFrequenz is a small tool to accurately identify the CPU frequency. The program can identify whether the system is running slow due to a processor ceiling or other reasons.

AutoHideDesktopIcons allows you to hide/unhide all desktop icons after a preset time.

PingInfoView allows you to easily ping multiple host names and IP addresses, and watch the result in one table. It automatically ping to all hosts every number of seconds that you specify, and displays the number of succeed and failed pings, as well as the average ping time. You can also save the ping result into text/html/xml file, or copy it to the clipboard.

Useful for checking connectivity or uptime of frequently used servers and websites.

AlwaysMouseWheel allows you to scroll (via mouse wheel) any window under the mouse, even if that window is not in the foreground. This is especially useful when referencing multiple windows without losing focus on the primary window (e.g. taking notes).

TheAeroClock is a simple but at the same time beautiful desktop clock with alpha transparency. Basic functions include transparency, size, setting and selection of the clock texture or appearance are available.

TagScanner is a multifunction program for organizing and managing your music collection. It can edit tags of most audio formats, rename files based on the tag information, generate tag information from filenames and perform any transformations of the text from tags and filenames. Album info available via online databases like gnudb, Discogs or MusicBrainz and includes a built-in audio player.

Supports ID3v1, ID3v2, Vorbis comments, APEv2, WindowsMedia and MP4 (iTunes) tags. Includes powerful TAG editor with batch functions and special features and a playlist maker with ability to export playlists to HTML, Excel or any user-defined format.

Advanced Renamer can rename multiple files or folders using several different methods for calculating the new name, including metadata tools for sound and picture files (e.g. GPS data or ID3 tags) or other sources. Supports unicode, regular expressions, custom javascript and more.

ColorConsole is an enhanced console with changeable font, style and color. Features include sizable window, multi-tabs, copy/paste/cut function, a fast folder switch, and export to RTF and HTML.

DesktopOK contains a host of beneficial Windows interface tweaks. The program can save the current icon view by resolution and make it easy to swap between views, showing all saved view formats in a list. Other tools include basic screenshots, the ability to force-close programs, color tool, volume and more:

• Interface tools include reducing clutter with a minimize-to-tray by right clicking on a window close button, mouse hiding and ability to hide desktop icons after a period of inactivity (click on the desktop to make them re-appear). You can even modify default icon spacing.
  
  
• Window management tools include scrolling any window that your mouse hovers over (not just what's in focus) and alt+drag (for moving windows without having to hold your cursor over the top bar).

SearchMyFiles is a powerful alternative to the standard Windows search. It allows you to easily find files by wildcard, last modified/created/last accessed time, file attributes, content (text or binary search) and file size. File types available for search includes Microsoft Office and PDF files. The program also be detect duplicate files via the "Search Mode" drop-down box.

Note that the program is non-indexing, meaning it searches the drive directly, which is often slower but more accurate.

GPU-Z is a lightweight system utility designed to provide vital information about your video card and graphics processor. It supports AMD, ATI, Intel and NVIDIA graphics devices.

Blank And Secure is a basic tool for permanently deleting files from your hard drive by overwriting them. The program includes drag-and-drop capability, multiple overwrites for greater security and a free space wipe feature to help prevent recovery of files already deleted.

StressMyPC allows you stress testing processor, graphics card and hard drive.

Warning: Unstable and overclocked systems can be crashed.

MKVcleaver extracts various data from MKV video files. It can be used in a batch mode (loading and extracting data from many files) as well as single file mode. It has a simple interface, but a lot of functionality.

The program is an outdated alternate graphical user interface for MKVToolNix (which is newer and has its own GUI including a 64-bit version).

IrfanView is a viewer for a wide variety of image, audio and video formats. The program includes batch processing, creation of panoramic images, edition of multi-page TIFF files, lossless JPEG rotate/crop and effects such as sharpen and blur. Other tools such as screen capture, scanner, slideshow, plugin support and ability to capture icons from EXE or DLL.

Alternatively, IrfanView Portable is also available and updates drive letters and handles registry keys.

MetarWeather decodes weather reports from around the world and displays them in a simple weather report table. You can export the weather report into text, HTML or XML files. MetarWeather can decode METAR-format reports from a text file, or download the latest reports.

12-Ants or more for your desktop. Itching is not excluded. Watching the little rascals and have fun.

4ur-Windows-8-Mouse-Balls generates 8 or more balls to follow the mouse pointer on your windows desktop.

InsideClipboard displays the binary content of all formats that are currently stored in the clipboard, allowing you to save the content of specific format into a binary file. This is helpful because although something copied or cut from an application can be in many different formats, Windows' main clipboard application only displays text or bitmaps. InsideClipboard can display many more stored formats.

CHK is simple checksum program that can verify downloaded files from the Internet, hash your files to ensure integrity and help detect duplicates. Supports drag-and-drop and most popular hash protocols including CRC-16/32/64, ED2K, MD4/5, SHA-1/256/512/3, BLAKE2sp/b, BLAKE3 etc.

PrivaZer scans and cleans your computers and storage devices, including external disks, USB flash drives, iPods, SD cards or network drives. It safeguards your privacy by removing unwanted traces of internet activities, software usage, USB history, registry and files.

The program includes an available secure delete function that overwrites files to prevent recovery.

HWiNFO is a professional hardware information and diagnostic tool supporting latest components, industry technologies and standards. Includes system health monitoring (Thermal, Voltage, Fan, Power), basic benchmarks and multiple report formats (text, CSV, XML, HTML, MHTML).

Clipboardic is a small utility that monitors clipboard (whenever you copy or cut) activity and automatically saves the data into a Windows clipboard file. When you need the copied data again, you can simply select the right clipboard file, and Clipboardic will automatically insert it into the clipboard (to paste).

Clipboardic also allows you to easily share the clipboard data between multiple computers on your local network.

WinScan2PDF is a very small program for scanning documents and saving them on your computer as a PDF by using any installed scanner.

WinBin2Iso converts CD and DVD disk images from BIN to ISO format, including files over 2GB. As many more tools support ISO over BIN images, this can save time and energy.

WifiInfoView scans the wireless networks in your area and displays extensive information about them. This includes Network Name (SSID), MAC Address, PHY Type (802.11g or 802.11n), RSSI, Signal Quality, Frequency, Channel Number, Maximum Speed, Company Name, Router Model and Router Name (only for routers that provides this information) and more.

When you select a wireless network in the upper pane of this tool, the lower pane displays the Wi-Fi information elements received from this device in hexadecimal format. A summary mode is also available that displays a summary of all detected wireless networks, grouped by channel number, company that manufactured the router, PHY type, or the maximum speed.

LibreOffice is a complete productivity suite including word processor, spreadsheet, presentations, database, drawing tool and more. Includes strong compatibility for 100s of file formats including Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio etc.). The program is similar to OpenOffice, a program that it was derived from, but has added many new features and improvements.

LibreOffice Portable is a special build developed in conjunction with the publisher. On systems without Java installed, some functions such as document creation wizards and the Base database application etc. can be enabled by adding jPortable, though this is optional and can be skipped if those functions are not needed. Alternatively, X-LibreOffice (64-bit version) is also available.

Other available portable versions:

• Still - more tested and stable but with fewer features/capabilities
• Legacy - for WinXP/Vista users (unsupported)

ArsClip remembers the most recent clipboard entries and allows you to quickly paste one or multiple items into a program by pressing a hotkey (by default Ctrl+Shift+Z). You can configure it to monitor both text and other data types and lets you create permanent items that are always visible. There are also multiple ways for entering items into a program, including a "form mode" for pasting to multiple fields in one step (e.g. name, date, address etc.).

PointerStick modifies the mouse arrow to appear as a virtual pointer stick. This is helpful for presentations to highlight content and the size, shape and other details of the pointer can be customized.

FastCopy is a file copy and synchronization tool with a variety of available extras. It uses different strategies (multi-threading, buffering) to help ensure maximum device throughput, as well as optional verification to make sure data is transferred correctly. It does not use the system cache, so other processes do not get bogged down during the copy process and a speed setting is also available, including pause. It supports Unix-style include/exclude wildcards filters.

Alternatively, PortableApps.com packages the last open source version as FastCopy Portable.

TakeStock is an investment portfolio manager to track US and international stocks, ETFs and mutual funds. The program can track dividends, capital gain distributions, margin equity and cash flow. You can view a security’s price chart, find historical prices, read company info and easily identify short and long term gains for tax reporting purposes.

Automatic functions include price quotes (usually delayed by 15 minutes) and alerts when a security’s target buy or sell price is reached.

OnlyStopWatch is a simple time monitor that includes a stop-watch and countdown timer. The program can display the hour and milliseconds and several background options are available.

Wireless Network Watcher scans both wireless and small wired networks, displaying a list of all computers and devices that are currently connected. For every device connected to your network, a listing of IP & MAC addresses, the company that manufactured the network card, and optionally the computer name are present.

PhraseExpress is a keyboard macro utility that manages all your frequently used text phrases from a taskbar icon and allows you to paste them into any application with a single mouse click, a keyboard shortcut, or a text macro command. The program is ideal for email reply templates, signatures, addresses and any other information that you find yourself typing repeatedly.

PhraseExpress also includes powerful macro functions to launch programs, files or email messages, offers support for dynamic macro commands and comes with a unique text-prediction feature.

UltraSearch Free is a fast and feature-rich search tool, building a searchable listing of drive content in seconds. File name searches narrow as they are typed and support wildcards such as "*.txt". Additional information like file size and last change date are present, along with access to Explorer's own context menu.

The program also includes a slower, non-indexing file content search that will look inside files, including a variety of Office (DOCX, PDF, PST, ODT) and compressed files (ZIP, 7Z, RAR). It is recommended that you provide a small set of files to check e.g. ext:DOCX content:portable to look for the word "portable" in MS Word files.

Other search options include AND / OR operations, regular expressions, a custom exclude filter for path, files, parent folders, etc., and results can be exported to text and CSV. Commercial version available with more features.

Version 3.1.2.678 is compatible with Win 7 and has not expired, but it is in installer form.

ImageCacheViewer scans the cache of your Web browser (Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Pale Moon, SeaMonkey, Google Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Vivaldi and Yandex) and lists the images displayed in the recently visited Web sites. For every cached image file, program displays the URL of the image, browser used, image type, image and browsing date/time and file size. Selecting an image from this list shows the image in the lowe rpane and you can copy the image to the clipboard (Ctrl+M) for pasting elsewhere.

The program is useful for getting around some image protection schemes, web development testing and tracking down a specific image when you're not sure of its associated website.

Note: The author recommends closing all windows of your Web browser before using to ensure that all files are saved to the disk. Additionally, the program won't work if the browser is configured to clear its cache on closing (for privacy or space reasons).

PicPick is a versatile all-in-one tool for images on the desktop. Includes a powerful screen capture tool, editor, color picker and palette, pixel ruler, protractor, crosshair, whiteboard and more. Can upload images automatically to FTP, Facebook, Twitter, default e-mail program, or send to installed Microsoft Office programs (Word, Excel, or PowerPoint).

Alternatively, PicPick Portable is stealth and automatically adjusts paths.

WizTree is a very fast disk space analyzer and search tool, scanning a single folder or your entire hard drive quickly and showing those files and folders using the most disk space. The program uses the NTFS Master File Table (MFT) feature in Windows to rapidly view files.

Note that this high-speed mode is limited to local, NTFS-formatted drives. The program must do a (much slower) scan of FAT-formatted or network drives for analysis.

XMedia Recode is an audio/video converter for most popular formats and includes handy profiles for popular mobile/tablet devices such as iPod, iPhone, Samsung, SonyEricsson, Zune, PSP, Blackberry, LG etc. These profiles include file format, screen size and other details chosen specifically for a given player.

Support many formats.

Note: Back when FFMPEG's hall of shame for licensing issues still existed, this program was a member there due to this issue.

HWMonitor is a hardware monitoring program that reads PC systems main health sensors including:

• CPU temperature, voltage, power consumption and utilization
• Mainboard voltages, temperatures, fans speed
• GPU voltage, temperature, utilization
• HDD temperature