Running Ollama Portably

Directions for creating a portable installation of Ollama. The LLM files will be stored in the same folder as the binaries and sourced automatically

Install Ollama using this link. The default installation folder will be %localappdata%Programs\Ollama

https://ollama.com/download

Create a file named "START_OLLAMA.bat" in %localappdata%\Programs\Ollama

@echo off
title Ollama Portable
set OLLAMA_ORIGINS=*
set OLLAMA_HOST=127.0.0.1
set userprofile=%cd%\data
set localappdata=%cd%\data\AppData\Local
start cmd /k "%cd%\ollama.exe" serve
start cmd /k "%cd%\ollama.exe" -v

Run the batch script. The first terminal window will be a live running server. The second pop-up terminal can be used to run ollama.exe. Download your LLM using this command

ollama.exe run gemma3:12b

Replace the Gemma model with any other model available in https://ollama.com/library

Copy this entire folder to anywhere you'd like. I have it on an external drive. This application will run portably after this.

I believe the "ollama app.exe" handles application updates. This causes issues with the portable installation, as some of the files don't get updated in the same folder as the installer and have to be manually copied over.

I don't intend on updating this. Rename "ollama app.exe" to "ollama app.exe.1" to prevent updates.

In %localappdata%Programs\Ollama, run the uninstaller to remove it from the host system. The only thing you'll be left with is the portable installation that was copied earlier.