What are the advantages of portable apps? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 2 months ago by starlight@lemmy.ca to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I recently learned that you can make many apps such as browsers portable on a USB drive and I was wondering, aside from being able to take it on the go, what other advantages does portable apps have? I know it won't take up much storage. Is there any privacy benefits?

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[-] fizzle@quokk.au 4 points 2 months ago

Privacy benefits would vary with different apps - you'd need to really dig into that.

Any purported benefits might stop mum from checking your browsing history but wouldn't stop a determined attacker, although they would likely need to have things in place to monitor you before you showed up with your USB drive.

I can't really think of what the practical benefits actually might be?

It might feel private, and it might even feel convenient in some cases, but as a general practice it seems like a whole lot of horsing around for very little benefit.

[-] starlight@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 months ago

One of the uses I was thinking of was putting a password manager on a USB. Not only it's portable, but I don't have my passwords in the cloud, it's offline storage. And so long as I encrypt the USB, access to the drive would be denied. But I don't know if its worth it.

[-] fizzle@quokk.au 1 points 2 months ago

Hmm... you probably want your passwords on your phone?

I use keepassxc and sync with syncthing.

Its not off-line, but its not on public infrastructure.

this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2026

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