LMMS • Forums

Exactly what it says on the tin: I wanna run LMMS on a USB 3.1 flash drive. Yes, I've tried the PortableApps version. It worked fine (aside from the accursed and seemingly universal distortion problem that plagues 1.2.2; gotta go through the driver fix for that) except that the only available architecture is 32-bit. Since many modern plugins and whatnot only run on 64-bit, I'll have to use the standard version and download it straight to my drive.

Has anyone ever gone down this road before, and, if so, do you have any advice? For example, how would I deal with any files that still end up in Windows Registry or potential quirks that result from switching devices? Thanks.

DanTheMan7 wrote: ↑

July 17th, 2026, 3:32 am

Exactly what it says on the tin: I wanna run LMMS on a USB 3.1 flash drive. Yes, I've tried the PortableApps version. It worked fine (aside from the accursed and seemingly universal distortion problem that plagues 1.2.2; gotta go through the driver fix for that) except that the only available architecture is 32-bit. Since many modern plugins and whatnot only run on 64-bit, I'll have to use the standard version and download it straight to my drive.

Has anyone ever gone down this road before, and, if so, do you have any advice? For example, how would I deal with any files that still end up in Windows Registry or potential quirks that result from switching devices? Thanks.

First off, Welcome to the Forum DanTheMan7 !
Here are all important links:
http://lmms.io/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4740
-A few rules and useful forum instructions
If you like to introduce yourself, to the community, go here:
http://lmms.io/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4480

You can install lmms on a usb-drive, but the one i have is still allowing user-files to be used from my HD installation, so on the flash-drive i only have LMMS factory-files. but if i understand you actually want a complete stand-alone-installation, where absolutely all files are located on the flash-drive. Even registry-files.
It is the portable experimental version that come closest, but even that do write to registry afaik. I do not know of an actual black-box version.
-Sorry.

musikbear wrote: ↑

July 17th, 2026, 10:36 pm

DanTheMan7 wrote: ↑

July 17th, 2026, 3:32 am

Exactly what it says on the tin: I wanna run LMMS on a USB 3.1 flash drive. Yes, I've tried the PortableApps version. It worked fine (aside from the accursed and seemingly universal distortion problem that plagues 1.2.2; gotta go through the driver fix for that) except that the only available architecture is 32-bit. Since many modern plugins and whatnot only run on 64-bit, I'll have to use the standard version and download it straight to my drive.

Has anyone ever gone down this road before, and, if so, do you have any advice? For example, how would I deal with any files that still end up in Windows Registry or potential quirks that result from switching devices? Thanks.

First off, Welcome to the Forum DanTheMan7 !
Here are all important links:
http://lmms.io/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=4740
-A few rules and useful forum instructions
If you like to introduce yourself, to the community, go here:
http://lmms.io/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=4480

You can install lmms on a usb-drive, but the one i have is still allowing user-files to be used from my HD installation, so on the flash-drive i only have LMMS factory-files. but if i understand you actually want a complete stand-alone-installation, where absolutely all files are located on the flash-drive. Even registry-files.
It is the portable experimental version that come closest, but even that do write to registry afaik. I do not know of an actual black-box version.
-Sorry.

Thanks for the resources and the warm welcome. I've done a bit of research into LMMS and PortableApps. As I understand it, PortableApps creates a local virtual registry on the drive and forces the contained application to write to that registry (the app may still write some things to the host registry, but those are also written to the local registry and wiped from the host registry when the app is closed). That doesn't matter for LMMS, which is self-contained in an .xml; at any rate, I could probably just delete the 32-bit files from the Portable build and paste in the 64-bit files from the vanilla build. The problem lies in the user files, as things like plugins will probably write to the registry. In that case, my best shot is to reprogram LMMSPortable to treat the USB as the Windows Environment. In other words, if I can fool all the plugins into thinking the USB is actually the host device, I won't have to download them to every device I use—just the USB.
If that doesn't work, I'll just suck it up and duplicate my plugins lol. At least I'll be able to say I tried. Thanks for the help.

DanTheMan7 wrote: ↑

July 21st, 2026, 2:52 am

The problem lies in the user files, as things like plugins will probably write to the registry.

LMMS userfiles can be placed in any directory, and the files created by userfiles (banks/ presets) will be placed in the directory that User decides to use in the Setup process:
Edit| Settings| Paths
As User you are 100% in control of where you want all files.
I is only factory-files that default is placed in
C:\\Program Files\\LMMS\\
But you can chose any directory when you install, but disregarding where you do select to install, there will be entries in Registry. Those are tricky.
We once attempted to make a .Zip version, that did not need to be installed. It failed.

It would be great if you tell us about any progress!

musikbear wrote: ↑

July 22nd, 2026, 11:45 pm

DanTheMan7 wrote: ↑

July 21st, 2026, 2:52 am

The problem lies in the user files, as things like plugins will probably write to the registry.

It would be great if you tell us about any progress!

Absolutely. We'll see if a virtual registry does the trick. If that works, then you should be able to have LMMS and everything that goes with it self-contained on a local drive. It's just a matter of making the USB look like the host device and cleaning the host registry every session. We'll see what happens.