WinSCP has been one of the most efficient and lightweight secure file transfer clients on the Internet for nearly 20 years. It supports FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, Amazon S3, SCP, and SSH.
If you are a web developer, or are just doing website and server management as a hobby, you have probably heard of this tool before.
One of the main advantages of WinSCP over popular alternatives like FileZilla and SmartFTP is its seamless integration between FTP and SSH. With one click, you can SSH to a server to which you have an active SFTP connection.
However, the SSH login process still makes this task tedious for many. It is inconvenient to enter a long and complex password multiple times just to connect to SFTP and SSH at the same time. However, many WinSCP users are unaware that there is a built-in fix for this. Let’s talk about how you can automatically pass the password of your WinSCP SFTP connection to SSH via PuTTY.
How to automatically SSH into PuTTY with WinSCP
How to automatically log in to SSH with PuTTY using WinSCP
The first step to configure the integration for automatic SSH login via PuTTY with WinSCP requires access to the Settings menu option.
At first it seems that you cannot access the Options menu without logging into an existing FTP or SFTP session. However, at the bottom of the login window that appears when you first start WinSCP, you can click the Tools button.
This will open a list of menu options and here you can click Settings.
If you are in an existing FTP or SFTP session, you can still access the WinSCP settings. Go to the menu bar at the top of the WinSCP window and click Options. From here you can click on “Settings”.
The settings window will open. In this window, click “Applications” (under the integration tree) in the left menu.
Here you can enable password transfer from FTP to SSH. The first checkbox “Remember the session password and send it to PuTTY (SSH)” is unchecked by default.
Check it out and you will no longer have to enter your password when connecting to SSH via PuTTY. When finished, click OK to save the settings.
It’s worth noting that this parameter can have erratic behavior. In some sessions, you will have to enter your SSH username. In others, no. I have yet to determine the reason for this, but this is a small problem – you will never have to enter a password anyway.
WinSCP is one of the best free Windows programs, and if you examine its options, you will find many customizable options that will allow you to further customize this file manager to your liking. Nearly twenty years of age did not prevent WinSCP from being as useful as ever!