5 Essential Free Apps You Should Always Keep On A USB Stick

Chances are that most everyone reading this has at least one USB flash drive within arm's reach, and probably more taking up space in a junk drawer. Technology moves fast and long gone are the days when owning a 512MB flash drive was considered a luxury. Today, USB flash drives come in all shapes and sizes with lots of companies and organizations even giving them away for free. With USB sticks becoming so prevalent, you might be wondering what you can do with those spare flash drives that you have lying around, taking up space. 

One of the best things you can do with a spare USB flash drive is create something akin to a USB survival kit. Simply load up a number of executable tools, programs, and utilities onto an old USB flash drive and be ready for any computer issue, tech emergency, or simply be ready to get work done anywhere a PC resides. The following tools and applications featured are all completely free, and having them loaded onto a spare USB flash drive will help to make your life a little bit easier. And who knows, they might even make you the family hero with all that you'll be able to accomplish with them. 

7-Zip is a very popular file archiver that's been around since 1999. This little tool allows users to easily extract compressed files that they may have downloaded from the internet, as well as compressing files that they want to save and share. The program is designed to handle the proprietary 7Z format, but it can handle many other popular formats like ZIP, TAR, and more. It also has better support for large archives and features a higher compression ratio when compared to other alternatives that exist. 

7-Zip is a small program making it handy if you want to install it on a machine that you own, but downloading the portable version and keeping it on a USB stick makes for better ease of use. Having 7-Zip on a USB stick will make accessing compressed files a breeze no matter where you are and what machine you might be using. While other archiver options exist, they often require you to pay in order to get all their benefits and many of them lack features that 7-Zip offers you.

Chances are high that everyone reading this has a password for something in their digital life, from various social media platforms, work and personal email accounts, banking, websites, and more. And while many of those accounts might share the same password, good online security suggests that you should have strong passwords with high complexity for each account that you use. This is even more important for highly secure sites from financial institutions and home security platforms. One issue with dealing with lots of passwords is that you probably won't be able to remember those long and confusing passwords you might be using. 

This can become an ever-bigger issue if you are traveling a great deal and need to access an account quickly and easily. It's annoying to follow the tedious process of resetting a password while on the go just to access an account. Having a good offline password manager loaded onto a USB stick will save you massive headaches when traveling, while also adding an extra layer of protection at home. KeePass is a lightweight open-source password manager that runs right from a USB stick and allows you to access all your passwords completely offline. This helps add an extra layer of security that many online-based password managers can lack.

Having access to a full office suite anywhere you might be can be a true lifesaver for those who find themselves always on the go, and especially for those needing to get some writing done at the drop of a hat or even when inspiration hits. Sure, you could always use a service such as Google Docs to get work done when you are away from home or the office and on a separate machine, but what happens when the Wi-Fi gods aren't working in your favor that particular day. This is where a portable instance of the popular office suite LibreOffice comes into the picture to save the day. 

LibreOffice Portable features everything that the installable version of the office suite offers, while letting you run it all from a small USB stick. You'll have access to a fully offline word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, and more. Keeping LibreOffice Portable on a USB stick while you travel, might be a game changer for many, especially if you find yourself away from home and using a different PC and need to get some quick work done. It's also just nice to have the full program available to use on the same USB stick that you keep a backup of all your work/personal documents.

The holidays mean that a great many people will be getting new computers and laptops, especially during those amazing Cyber Monday and Black Friday deals that always pop up. The issue with many of these low-cost machines that go on sale during the holidays is that they can often be riddled with bloatware, sometimes from the manufacturer and other times from Windows itself. This bloatware can take an already underpowered PC or laptop and make it nearly unusable for many people. If you load WinTune onto a USB stick you might just find yourself becoming the hero over the holidays. 

With WinTune, you can load the program onto any machine and select what you want to remove and disable through the use of an easy-to-use checkbox system. Each option will also provide the user with a description of what that program or service does, so you know exactly what you are removing and what impact it might have on the system. The program can also help those older machines that are being slowed down by bloatware, giving them a little more life. If you are looking to make a Windows 11 machine run leaner and faster, then having a copy of WinTune on hand might be your best bet. 

Your media, your way. Well, that's the idea with VLC Media Player as this very popular media player plays nearly every video and audio format that exists. If you want to play something you can, without needing to download any special codecs from any shady websites to do so. Simply download and install VLC Media Player and load any media file that you might be working with to see what other media players can't. 

If you don't want to install the program on a random PC and find that you can't access specific media files on the machine that you are using with a standard media player, loading up the portable version of VLC Media Player will almost certainly play it for you. The program can even play broken files while giving you repair options to play media that you might have thought lost and unrecoverable. It's also a great tool to use when you come across ancient media formats on older machines that you want to play and save.