Run Filemote on Windows without installing it

The portable build is the same application as the installer version, in a folder you can put anywhere — a work laptop where you cannot install software, or a USB drive. Nothing is written to the registry and nothing is registered with Windows.

Unblock, then extract

  1. Download filemote-<version>-win-x64.zip.
  2. Right-click the downloaded file → Properties → tick Unblock → OK. Windows marks downloaded archives, and the mark spreads to every file you extract; clearing it once on the zip saves clearing it on seventy files. See the download warnings explained.
  3. Extract it into a new, empty folder. The archive has no folder of its own, so unpacking it into an existing folder scatters seventy-odd files among whatever is already there.
  4. Run Filemote.exe.

What is in the folder

FileWhat it is
Filemote.exeThe configurator — the window you interact with
FilemoteAgent.exeThe agent, the part that actually serves your files
FilemoteCli.exeA terminal configurator, for setting things up without the window
AiService\The local AI service, its dependencies list and the bundled engine wheel
setup_ai.batOne-off installer for the AI Python packages
app_settings.jsonAn empty settings template

All three executables are self-contained builds, which is why the archive is large — and why no .NET installation is needed.

Turning on AI

Unlike the installer, the portable build brings no Python of its own. To use the AI features:

  1. Install Python 3.10 or newer, if the machine does not already have it.
  2. Run setup_ai.bat from the extracted folder, as a normal user — no administrator rights are needed.

It installs the bundled llama.cpp engine and the rest of the requirements. The AI engine runs GGUF models through llama.cpp; there is no PyTorch download involved.

What you give up

  • No autostart. You launch Filemote yourself; nothing starts after a reboot.
  • No automatic updates. The portable build does not update itself — you download the next version and replace the folder. See keeping Filemote up to date.
  • No Start-menu entry.

If none of those matter to you, the portable build is otherwise the full application.

Removing it

Delete the folder. If you used the AI knowledge base, also delete %APPDATA%\Filemote, which is where the indexed data lives — outside the portable folder. The full picture is in removing Filemote.

Updated 2026-07-31

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