Foobar2000

Hello there,

I'm a ripened audio engineer and new to foobar and would like to use it to play back my local collection of music.

To me, having everything in one folder, especially when installing custom themes sounds less invasive than doing a standard installation and in case of failure having to manually delete things in various places.

So, probably asked many times but what are the critical downsides running it standalone?

I'd like to use it with my Lynx Aurora (n) converter btw.

Oh and also I'm on Windows 11.

Thanks in advance 🙏

I found this definition on foobar2000.org:

Portable mode

Installing in portable mode only extracts the installer content and creates additional files that tell foobar2000 to store any configuration data in its installation folder as well as not to alter the Windows registry. Note that it is not possible to edit file type associations with foobar2000 when using portable mode, as that would require changes in the registry.

But what does it mean?

We all know that due to the decision of the creator of foobar2000, it doesn’t allow you to register extensions if you install foobar2000 as portable. But as it turns out, it’s very very simple to make it working with your Windows and Explorer. Here’s how:

1. Download and install latest foobar2000 version from foobar2000.org/download

2. Start the setup. When installing, choose Portable installation and install wherever you want (Example: D:\foobar2000)

3. Start the setup again and this time, choose Standard installation and install it to the default location (Example: C:\Program Files (x86)\foobar2000)

4. Open a new Explorer window and go to Standard installation folder (In this case it’s C:\Program Files (x86)\foobar2000)

5. Copy these 3 files to your Portable folder: foobar2000 Shell Associations Updater.exe, ShellExt32.dll, ShellExt64.dll

6. Uninstall Standard installation foobar2000

7. Open a new Explorer window and go to your Portable installation folder (In this case it’s D:\foobar2000)

8. Rename the file portable_mode_enabled to something

9. Start the foobar2000.exe in your Portable folder

10. Go to File > Preferences > Shell Integration and click Manage file type associations

11. Choose the extensions you want to register

12. After the register, close your Foobar2000 and rename something to portable_mode_enabled.

13. Start foobar2000 again and enjoy being able to to open your audio files with a right-click like this.

Or, if you trust me, you can skip all the steps explaining the standard installation and download the three files here. When you've downloaded the three files you just have to do step 5, 7-13.