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Integration with Windows

WinSCP offers several ways how to integrate itself into Windows. You can setup the integration during installation or later on Integration tab of Preferences dialog.

WinSCP can also closely cooperate with other applications.

Desktop and Quick Launch Icons
Explorer’s ‘Send To’ Context Menu
SCP and SFTP Protocols URL Addresses
Search Path
Drag&drop Shell Extension

Desktop and Quick Launch Icons

You can have shortcut icons to WinSCP on the desktop or Quick Launch toolbar of Windows Taskbar. The shortcut can either open WinSCP login dialog only or open stored session directly.

To create the first kind of icon use installer or go to Preferences dialog. To create the second kind of icon go to Stored Sessions tab of Login dialog, select stored session and use Shell icon button.

Explorer’s ‘Send To’ Context Menu

You can have shortcut icons in ‘Send To’ menu in file context menu of Windows Explorer, which can be displayed for example by right-clicking any file. The shortcut can either open WinSCP login dialog only or stored session directly. In both cases after the session is opened, the files selected previously in Windows Explorer are uploaded to the server. WinSCP can then either close itself or open main window.

To create the icon that opens Login dialog use installer or go to Preferences dialog. To create the icon that automatically opens selected stored session go to Stored Sessions tab of Login dialog, select stored session and use Shell icon button.

SCP and SFTP Protocols URL Addresses

WinSCP can be registered to handle SCP and SFTP protocol URL addresses. For supported URL format see command-line options. If the path part of the URL does end with slash (/) WinSCP starts with the path as initial remote directory. If the path does not end with slash, the file (or directory) specified by it is downloaded.

To register WinSCP to handle the URL addresses use installer or go to Preferences dialog.

If current user’s permissions allow, WinSCP register itself for all users. Otherwise it registers for current user only.

Learn how to copy URL of file selected in file panel to clipboard.

Search Path

From installer or Preferences dialog you can add WinSCP installation directory to search path (environment variable PATH). This is particularly useful if you use console/scripting mode.

To modify search path, the installer modifies autoexec.bat on Windows 95/98/ME and changes machine (all users) registry keys on Windows NT/2000/XP and newer.