Make a portable version of Beam Desktop Wallet

Feature Request
1

As an official download option of the Desktop Wallet, there should be a ready-to-use “portable” version available.

It could simply be a zip (or tar.gz) file of a folder containing all the files needed to run the wallet, plus a subfolder in which the user data (i.e. node, wallet, config, etc.) would be stored. The default settings would be configured to use that subfolder, and the Beam Wallet would not write anything outside of it.

This portable version would be useful to run on machines where the user has no install permissions, or to be used from a USB flash drive, or even from a cloud drive.

Notes:

  • To be truly “portable” the Beam Wallet should not leave any traces in the system once closed (i.e. not Windows registry use, no file outside of the portable folder, etc.),
  • It is understood that a third-party access to the wallet.db file (by instance, if the USD flash drive is stolen) is only as secure as the wallet password defined by the user.
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2

As a proof of concept, I have been using a Windows version of the Beam Wallet, run from a USD flash drive, for some time without any specific problem (I have, however, not checked the kind of traces it might leave on the machines I run it on).

image

The initial setup was manual, but simple:

  • One main folder, with a *.bat file and two subfolders:“App” and “Data”
  • The “App” folder contains a copy of the normal install folder (which in Windows is
    "C:\Program Files\Beam Wallet").
  • The “Data” folder contains the userdata (which in Windows is normally located in “%LOCALAPPDATA%\Beam Wallet”).
  • The *.bat file contains the following script:
@REM Launch a portable version of Beam Wallet
@ECHO off
start /B "" "%~dp0\App\Beam Wallet.exe" --appdata "%~dp0\Data"

That’s it! Just click on the *.bat file to launch this portable Desktop Wallet.

PS: I have not tried it, but a Mac or Linux portable version should be similarly easy to do.

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