Integration with Windows

You can have shortcut icons to WinSCP on your desktop or Quick Launch toolbar of Windows Taskbar. The shortcut can 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.

The icons with associated with stored session can also upload the files dropped on them1.

You can have shortcut icons appear in the ‘Send To’ menu, found in the File menu in Windows Explorer and displayed when a file is right-clicked. Shortcuts can either open WinSCP and present the login dialog or open a stored session directly. In both cases after the session is opened, the selected file(s) are uploaded to the server; WinSCP can then close or go on to display its user interface.

To create a shortcut that displays the Login dialog box, use installer or go to Preferences dialog. Alternatively, a shortcut that automatically opens stored sessions can be created by going to the Stored Sessions tab of the Login dialog box; select the stored session and click the Shell icon button.

WinSCP can be registered to handle SFTP and SCP 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.

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 change the 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.

WinSCP installer can install drag&drop shell extension to improve WinSCP capability of downloading files using drag&drop.