I haven’t even found the need for a thumbdrive outside of flashing firmware and storage devices. All my documents are on google drive.
I use them for:
- Music in my car
- Moving files to my locked-down work PC
- The (read only) OS drives for my Unraid NAS servers
- Media for my parents to watch when they are away on vacation and can plug it into a hotel TV
- General sneakernetting of large files
They definitely don’t get as much use as before, but I’m still using them.
Edit: please don’t downvote the person above me, they are only saying what is true for them :)
Also in a business context you need them to play displays on screens at conferences usually.
And students I imagine will frequently use them to print documents at the library, or design students at the print shop
In my experience all of this has been done wirelessly for several years.
The risk of malware means you aren’t allowed to plug in sticks. For business use you share a document or wirelessly connect to a display.
In fact our local library didn’t USB sticks eight years ago when I was researching our family tree.
I think of “thumb drives” as portable SSD with USB. “Portable backup drives” have taken its place for me. Incredibly fast (NVMe SSD + USB-C), quite small (M2 card size + case), durable (same as thumb drives), growing sizes (1-2 TB affordable).
I keep my old flash drives for smaller things like bootable apps, fresh OS installs, firmware updates. I definitely have no need for mystery off-brand storage though.
