Topics / #portable

Portable projects on GitHub

Applications that run without installation from a single folder.

As of , the most-starred Portable projects on GitHub are pdf.js (54K stars), cmder (27K stars) and pkg (24.3K stars). GitHub.Locker tracks 25 Portable repositories with 312.9K stars combined. The fastest-growing on October 16 was quiver-launcher, with +162 stars in a day.

25Projects
312.9KStars in total
+374Stars in a day
Browse in the catalog →github.com/topics/portable ↗

Hot right now

Most stars gained in a day · Oct 16

+162

quiver-launcher

tgeorgiadis/quiver-launcher · ★ 2.2K

Quiver Launcher is a desktop app for downloading, installing, and running apps and games from GitHub and GitLab releases, backed by a personal library, a community app catalog, and mod management support.

+90

Winhance

memstechtips/Winhance · ★ 13.8K

Winhance is a free Windows enhancement utility that debloats, optimizes and customizes Windows 10 and 11, combining app management, privacy and performance tweaks, and theming in one GUI app.

+19

optimizerDuck

itsfatduck/optimizerDuck · ★ 10.5K

A free, open-source Windows optimization app that gathers performance tweaks, privacy settings, bloatware removal and cleanup tools in one place, so you don't have to dig through the Registry, Group Policy or PowerShell.

+19

FluentCleaner

builtbybel/FluentCleaner · ★ 6.5K

FluentCleaner is a free, open-source alternative to CCleaner for Windows. It cleans junk files, browser cache, and temp data using the community-maintained winapp2.ini rule database, built with a modern WinUI 3 interface and no ads, upsells, or dark patterns.

The all-time top

25 projects · by stars

  1. #1 · mozilla/pdf.js

    pdf.js

    PDF.js is a PDF viewer built with HTML5, community-driven and supported by Mozilla. Its goal is a general-purpose, web standards-based platform for parsing and rendering PDFs.

    54K
  2. #2 · cmderdev/cmder

    cmder

    Cmder is a console emulator package for Windows, created out of pure frustration over the lack of a usable console there. It wraps ConEmu with a major config overhaul, a Monokai color scheme, clink and a custom prompt layout.

    27K
  3. #3 · vercel/pkg

    pkg

    A CLI from Vercel that packages a Node.js project into a single executable that runs even on machines without Node.js installed. Heads up: the project is now archived and deprecated.

    24.3K
  1. 4

    TranslucentTB

    20.6KTranslucentTB/TranslucentTB · C++

    A lightweight utility that makes the Windows taskbar translucent or transparent on Windows 10 and 11. It uses only a few MB of RAM and almost no CPU.

  2. 5

    wasmtime

    18.7Kbytecodealliance/wasmtime · Rust

    Wasmtime is a lightweight WebAssembly runtime: it executes WebAssembly (wasm) programs quickly and securely. It is written in Rust and developed under the Bytecode Alliance.

  3. 6

    systeminformer

    16.3Kwinsiderss/systeminformer · C

    System Informer is a free, powerful multi-purpose tool for Windows that helps you monitor system resources, debug software and detect malware.

  4. 7

    yq

    16.1Kmikefarah/yq · Go

    yq is a lightweight, portable command-line processor for YAML, JSON, XML, INI and more — you pipe data through jq-like expressions to read, edit or convert it right in the terminal.

  5. 8

    Flow.Launcher

    15.8KFlow-Launcher/Flow.Launcher · C#

    Flow Launcher is a quick file search and application launcher for Windows, similar to Alfred or Spotlight, with support for community-made plugins.

  6. 9

    shelljs

    14.4Kshelljs/shelljs · JavaScript

    ShellJS is a portable implementation of Unix shell commands (cat, cp, mkdir, grep, sed, etc.) built on top of the Node.js API, letting you write shell-style scripts that run the same on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

  7. 10

    Playnite

    14.2KJosefNemec/Playnite · C#

    Playnite is an open source video game library manager and launcher. It brings games from third-party launchers like Steam, Epic and GOG, plus emulated titles, into one unified interface.

  8. 11

    nuklear

    14Kvurtun/nuklear · C

    Nuklear is a minimal state immediate mode graphical user interface toolkit written in ANSI C (C89) and released into the public domain, meant to be embedded into your application.

  9. 12

    Winhance

    13.8Kmemstechtips/Winhance · C#

    Winhance is a free Windows enhancement utility that debloats, optimizes and customizes Windows 10 and 11, combining app management, privacy and performance tweaks, and theming in one GUI app.

  10. 13

    nexe

    13.6Knexe/nexe · TypeScript

    Nexe is a command-line utility that compiles a Node.js application into a single executable file.

  11. 14

    sftpgo

    12.7Kdrakkan/sftpgo · Go

    SFTPGo is a self-hosted, event-driven file transfer server that speaks SFTP, HTTP/S, FTP/S and WebDAV, and can store files on local disk, encrypted local disk, S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Blob Storage, or even another SFTP server.

  12. 15

    ubicloud

    12.3Kubicloud/ubicloud · Ruby

    Ubicloud is an open source cloud platform that runs on bare metal servers, offering elastic compute, non-replicated block storage, firewall and load balancer, managed Postgres, Kubernetes, AI inference, and IAM services as an open alternative to AWS.

  13. 16

    optimizerDuck

    10.5Kitsfatduck/optimizerDuck · C#

    A free, open-source Windows optimization app that gathers performance tweaks, privacy settings, bloatware removal and cleanup tools in one place, so you don't have to dig through the Registry, Group Policy or PowerShell.

  14. 17

    FluentCleaner

    6.5Kbuiltbybel/FluentCleaner · C#

    FluentCleaner is a free, open-source alternative to CCleaner for Windows. It cleans junk files, browser cache, and temp data using the community-maintained winapp2.ini rule database, built with a modern WinUI 3 interface and no ads, upsells, or dark patterns.

  15. 18

    KillerPDF

    4.1KSteveTheKiller/KillerPDF · C#

    KillerPDF is a free, open-source PDF editor for Windows built around its own PDF 2.0 engine, letting you view, annotate, OCR, merge, split, edit text, sign, fill forms, print and flatten PDFs without any subscription.

  16. 19

    quiver-launcher

    2.2Ktgeorgiadis/quiver-launcher · C#

    Quiver Launcher is a desktop app for downloading, installing, and running apps and games from GitHub and GitLab releases, backed by a personal library, a community app catalog, and mod management support.

  17. 20

    youtube-music

    777sohaibdevv/youtube-music · TypeScript

    It is a free, ad-free desktop client for streaming YouTube Music that needs no subscription or premium account to skip ads.

  18. 21

    vdl

    327engatec/vdl · Java

    VDL is a cross-platform desktop application that puts a graphical interface on yt-dlp, so you can download videos from YouTube and many other supported sites without touching the command line.

  19. 22

    MoE4All

    291Headmaster218/MoE4All · Rust

    MoE4All is a portable Windows app that runs large Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) LLMs beyond what fits in VRAM by streaming expert weights between GPU VRAM, system RAM and SSD, built on a Vulkan-first Rust inference engine so consumer AMD (and other Vulkan) GPUs can run huge models locally.

  20. 23

    GoLiveBypass

    271bezumiya/GoLiveBypass · TypeScript

    GoLiveBypass is a tool that restores Discord's Go Live screen share and camera for users connecting from Brazil, by routing the Discord process through a non-Brazilian exit (Tor, a tested free proxy, or a private WireGuard/ProtonVPN tunnel) so Discord's servers no longer see a Brazilian IP.

  21. 24

    ds4windows-lab-2026

    139RopemakerEnd/ds4windows-lab-2026 · HTML

    A portable companion toolkit and documentation set for DS4Windows, which maps DualShock 4 and DualSense controllers to Xbox 360 input on Windows. It bundles setup guides, profile examples, and a portable Windows helper executable.

  22. 25

    turbocrypt

    129jedisct1/turbocrypt · Zig

    TurboCrypt is a fast, easy-to-use command-line tool that encrypts and decrypts files, Git repositories, and directory trees — from a single document to a whole directory of backups.

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