Integration with Windows

You can have shortcut icons to WinSCP on your desktop or on the Quick Launch toolbar (not available on Windows 7 and newer). The shortcut can display WinSCP’s login dialog or open a site (stored session) , site folder, or workspace directly.

To create a shortcut to WinSCP, simply allow the program to create the icons itself when running the installer, or click the buttons found in the Preferences dialog via the Options/Preferences menu in WinSCP’s user interface if it’s already installed. Shortcuts to sites, site folders and workspaces are easily made from WinSCP’s Login dialog box by selecting the target from the list then selecting the shortcut type by clicking the Shell icon button.

The icons associated with site also serve as upload drop targets, allowing files to be automatically uploaded when dragged over the icon and dropped1.

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 site (stored session) directly. In both cases after the site 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 site can be created by going to the Sites/Stored sessions page of the Login dialog box; select the site and click the Shell icon button.

To remove the icon, go to C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo folder (or to C:\Documents and Settings\username\SendTo folder on Windows XP and older) and remove respective shortcut.

WinSCP can be registered to handle SFTP and SCP protocol URL addresses. See supported URL format.

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 make WinSCP save session settings provided by URL to a site instead of opening a session, add ;save after trailing slash (/) of the URL. This feature is available only in the latest beta release. For SFTP/SCP URL this should be combined with including SSH host key fingerprint in the URL. Example: sftp://martin:mypassword;fingerprint=ssh-rsa-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx@example.com/;save

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.

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