How to Create Portable Version of Opera Browser

Opera is back into competition after it has adopted a new web rendering engine called Blink, the same one as used by the Google Chrome. One of the benefits of having the same engine is that now Opera users can install Google Chrome extensions too. Like other browsers Opera also keeps releasing newer beta versions of the browser under the title Opera Next. If you want to try out the Opera Next without having to install it, then you can create a portable edition of the Opera browser. This way you can run multiple versions of Opera in Windows in order to check them out. Here is how you can create a portable edition of Opera in Windows:

Note: Before proceeding, you should install the 7-Zip software in Windows. It is free and is required to extract the contents of the Opera setup file.

  1. First of all, you have to download the full setup package of Opera for Windows. You can download the stable release of Opera from www.opera.com. If you want to download the beta versions of Opera (Opera Next), then you can get them from www.opera.com/next.
  2. After you have downloaded the Opera setup file, copy it over to your USB disk or a folder where you want to create the portable edition of Opera. For example, I am going to creating the portable edition in the C:\Opera folder. Then right-click on the setup installer file and choose 7-Zip → Extract Here as shown in the picture.

    How to Create Portable Version of Opera Browser

  3. This would extract the contents of the setup file to the current folder. Do not try to run Opera.exe or Launcher.exe yet.
  4. Create a new file start.bat with the following contents (you should copy/paste to avoid any error) :
    @echo off
    Opera.exe –data-path=.profile
    exit

    How to Create Portable Version of Opera Browser

    Save this start.bat file in C:\Opera or wherever you copied the setup file in step 2 above.

  5. That’s it. You have the portable edition of Opera ready to be used. If you have installed Opera on your system, close all the open Opera windows because only one version of Opera can be run at a single time. Now you can double-click on the start.bat file to run the portable Opera.

In the portable version of Opera, all your settings and profile shall be stored in the profile sub-folder of the directory where opera.exe resides. You can delete this profile folder to start afresh and clear all settings, extensions, browsing history etc. However, if you try to run Opera directly through opera.exe or launcher.exe, then it would create a profile folder in the Windows user’s profile directory. So you should always run portable opera through the start.bat file.