Drag&drop Shell Extension

The extension is installed by WinSCP installer by default (the standalone WinSCP application does not include the extension and it cannot be downloaded separatelly).

If you install the extension you will need to restart your computer to make it operational.

To check that the extension is loaded, run WinSCP and display Drag&Drop tab of Preferences windows. If the “Use shell extension” checkbox is enabled (not grayed), the extension is loaded.

To tell WinSCP to use the extension, select “Use shell extension” checkbox. Note the unselecting it (or rather selecting “Use temporary folder” checkbox) does not uninstall the extension. It will be still loaded into memory and will be loaded every time the operation system starts up.

Note that the extension is registered in the operating system (or rather Windows Explorer) and thur it is loaded into memory even if you do not use WinSCP.

Update: Since version 2.2, temporary directory can be changed directly in WinSCP in Preferences.

Update 2: Since many pople ask, why are the files downloaded first to temporary directory at all, here is short explanation: Windows drag&drop mechanics does not allow source application of drag&drop operation to find out easily, where the files are dropped. It is up to target application (Windows Explorer usually) to transfer files to destination. It is rather reasonable, because source application can hardly transfer files to all possible destinations. Keep in mind that you can drop files not only to a directory, but even to ZIP file (or any other archive), remote directory (via FTP, SCP, SFTP…), trash, …

Obviously even Windows Explorer (or any other target application, like WinZip) cannot download files from any possible source (particulary it does not know SCP/SFTP). So the trick is that WinSCP tells Explorer that the files are in temporary folder (from where Explorer knows how to get the files) and a moment before the Explorer starts to copy files from there, WinSCP downloads the files there.

There is a method how to allow direct downloads using drag&drop, at least to normal folders (not FTP, etc.). The method will be eventually implemented in WinSCP. The drawback is that it requires Explorer extension (DLL) to be installed to Windows, which requires you to have administrator priviledges to install WinSCP. It also make WinSCP lose its great advantage, that it is standalone application (EXE file) not requiring any installation at all.

Update 3: the method mentioned above was implemented in 3.5.5 as “drag&drop shell extension”.