This feature makes REAPER one of the most useful DAWs in existence

Many producers work on the move and freeing yourself from your PC is a must. That is why I want to talk to you about REAPER’s portable install feature, and why it makes it one of the most useful DAWs on the planet.

Picture this situation. You are working on a project and want to take it to your friend’s house, but you don’t have a laptop.

Because REAPER is portable, you can load it onto a USB stick and take your whole studio with you – without even needing a laptop.

The way this works is in how REAPER has been designed. Most software requires installation on the computer and is linked with various folders, registries, and configuration files on the hard drive.

REAPER on the other hand is made so it leaves a very clean footprint – clean enough to be able to run from its files on a USB drive. This was a bit of an over-simplification, but let’s move on.

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In addition to this, you can add all your VSTs (provided they are .DLL files) onto the USB stick and keep all of your main plugins together as well.

SIDE NOTE: Some VSTs with Digital Rights Management (DRM) may not work with this type of install to prevent piracy. Generally, any VST that uses DRM like iLok or has large libraries attached will probably not work.

How to install Portable REAPER on a USB stick?

Installation is simple and only requires PC users to download the normal installer. When prompted, select Portable Install and install it on your USB stick of choice.

Mac users face additional steps, but it is relatively similar. Drag it into the USB stick of choice and save a blank plain text file into that folder. Rename it ‘Reaper.INI’.

For people who already have REAPER set up on their computer and are looking to copy all their custom configuration onto the portable version, it is just as easy.

Under Preferences, select General and Export Configuration. Then load that into the portable version of REAPER using the same tab, where it says Import Configuration.

The ultimate production USB stick

As you can imagine, this feature of REAPER is extremely useful for people who may jump between many computers. In this case, it might be worth creating a production USB stick.

This stick will have all of your samples, VSTs, and REAPER itself so you can pretty much show up at any computer and get producing.

For this, I recommend a larger USB capacity and USB 3.0 or faster will be best for responsiveness and speed.

Also make sure to have regular backups in the cloud because you don’t want to lose everything by misplacing such a small piece of kit.