WinSCP 5.5 Changes

Login dialog has been simplified:

• Both site tree and basic session controls are visible at the same time.
• Login dialog is resizable. 378
• Modal editing of sites.
• Advanced session controls moved to a separate dialog Advanced Site Settings dialog.
• Context menu for site tree.
• Site name and path are specified separately when saving site.
• Separate entry for New Site in site tree.
• Global settings such as Interface and Logging removed from Login dialog.
• Language selection moved from Languages button of Login dialog to Languages page of Preferences dialog.
• Display of sessions in workspace.
• SSH Private key file box moved to SSH tab of Advanced Site Settings dialog.
• Improved incremental search for sites on Login dialog: 984
  • Text is searched anywhere in the site name, not only at the beginning.
  • Next/previous matching sites can be searched for.
  • Search text is shown below site list.
• New Site icon on Login dialog and Session tabs.
• Export to INI file moved from Preferences to Login dialog.
• Changing session port number on Login dialog to well know port, updates protocol automatically.
• Renamed Login and Preferences dialogs’ “tabs” to “pages”.
• Session can be opened in PuTTY from Login dialog. 190
• Showing tree lines on site tree on Login dialog.
• Warning that editing is in progress when double-clicking edited site on Login dialog.
• Keyboard shortcut to open site in PuTTY on Login dialog. 1079
• It’s possible to Login/Open a site in PuTTY in a new window without closing Login dialog. 1086
• Allowing Enter and Esc keys on site list of folder/workspace view on Login dialog.

Transfer options dialog has been simplified:

• The dialog is shown only on the first transfer, when using drag&drop, unless user explicitly opts to show it the next time.
• Moved the New and updated files only option to Transfer settings.
• Moved the Do not show this dialog box again checkbox below buttons.
• Hiding Transfer each file individually when not applicable.
• Icon to distinguish Copy/Move operation.
• Do not show this dialog box again implies saving transfer settings

Improved working with transfer settings and presets:

• Not showing default Text mode file mask in Transfer settings box.
• Showing even default Binary Transfer type in Transfer settings box.
• Removed “Exclude temporaries” transfer settings preset.
• Added “Newer and updates files only” transfer settings preset.
• Reorganized Transfer settings drop down menu, including new Presets header.
• Hiding unusable presets from Transfer settings drop down menu.
• Merged configuration of default transfer settings and transfer settings presets.

Convenience and robustness has been improved: 1023

• Avoiding repetitive master password prompts, when editing site.
• Detect and warn when trying to set/clear master password while another instance of WinSCP is running.
• Not prompting for master password for read-only site view.
• Hiding an actual password length from read-only site view.
• When setting/changing/clearing master password, collecting errors while recrypting passwords individually, not to abort whole process on a single error.
• Gracefully handling stray encrypted passwords, when master password is actually not enabled or different.
• Feedback and repeated prompt on incorrectly entered master password in scripting mode.

• Windows and panel size configuration (including default configuration) scales with DPI.
• Using native “Segoe UI” dialog font in Windows Vista and later.
• Changing Internal editor and Console window font to “Lucida Console” (Windows 7 and older) or “Consolas” (Windows 8 and newer).
• Using icon font for file panels/lists, directory trees, path labels, status bars, message boxes and other controls throughout the application.
• Saving preferred editor font in points, rather than pixels.
• File panels respond to changes of system icon font.
• Using native scaling even for scales above 120%/125 DPI.
• Using Windows native scalable mouse cursors for splitters.

• Using term Site instead of Stored session.
• Sites import from Filezilla. 61
• Whole site folder can be opened at once. 424
• Workspace can be saved. 776
• Site Manager command. 855
• Desktop shortcut to open site folder can be created.

• Only shortcut to WinSCP itself is created in Start menu. 616
• When upgrading, setup offers to restart Windows Explorer (or other applications), when drag&drop shell extension needs to be updated. 686
• While installing, setup offers sites import from PuTTY or Filezilla.
• On first edit, WinSCP offers configuration of user’s custom text editor as default editor.
• Command to Import/restore configuration from INI file.
• Not requiring Windows nor Windows Explorer restart when new version uses the same or older version of Drag&Drop shell extension than existing one.

• For special cases, it is possible to accept any SSH host key or any TLS/SSL certificate (with warning) using -hostkey=* in scripting and SessionOptions.GiveUpSecurityAndAcceptAnySshHostKey or SessionOptions.GiveUpSecurityAndAcceptAnySshHostKey in .NET assembly. 815
• Transfer progress feedback using Session.FileTransferProgress event. 818
• Transfer resume support can be controlled in scripting (-resumesupport switch of file transfer commands) and .NET assembly (TransferOptions.ResumeSupport property). 834
• Synchronization preview in scripting. 885
• Renamed WinSCP .NET assembly to winscpnet.dll to avoid conflicts with winscp.exe. 945
• Printing transfer progress for small files in bytes in scripting. 964
• Subset of custom command patterns can be used in PuTTY path, including !/, !@, !U, !P, !?prompt?! and !`command`. This among other allows opening PuTTY in the same directory as current WinSCP working directory 326; or using different SSH client, such as KiTTY 966.
• System error message is shown when changing local working directory fails in scripting. 1087
• Before opening session using command-line parameter in scripting, warning is printed, that this is deprecated function.
• Retrospectively logging previous script records when session is starting.
• Change: Not trying to kill WinSCP process from .NET assembly Session finalizer.
• Event Session.FileTransferProgress is always raised when file transfer completes.
• Custom command pattern !`command` that expands to output of local command.

• Change: Session from commandline and/or from jump list is opened by default using existing WinSCP instance. 769
• Writing INI file to user’s profile, if program path is not writable. 817
• Any mouse or keyboard input cancels or resets reconnect countdown.
• Increased default reconnect interval for idle sessions to 9 seconds.
• Reconnect interval for idle sessions can be configured independently.
• Reporting an error when reading of local directory fails during operation. 952
• When SFTP connection is rejected, knock FTP port. If open suggest using FTP protocol.
• Dropped support for Windows 2000. Minimal supported version is Windows XP.
• Using GiB scale for large file sizes. 913
• Option to reconnect disconnected non-active session, when saving file opened from that session. 917
• Use of MLSD FTP command is configurable. 927
• Allowing host key import for SSH protocols only.
• Added larger values to initial offer of speed limits. 987
• Offering to remember password for duration of session on password prompt (when settings Remember password for duration of session is turned off). 610
• Not allowing Timezone offset session setting with FTP protocol, while MLSD listing command is used.
• Not opening session from jumplist in existing instance, if it is showing error.
• Moved option to remember session password from Background to Security page of Preferences dialog.
• Cached SSH host keys are imported by default.
• Not showing disconnect error message before reconnecting inactive session to upload edited file.
• Performance improvement.
• Configurable minimal and maximal supported TLS/SSL version.
• Reusing TLS/SSL session ID is configurable.
• Not asking for exit confirmation when Windows session is closing.
• Reporting connection errors on FTP transfer failure.
• Change: Using UTF-8 for strings (such as file names) with SFTP protocol by default even for version 3 and lower. 1072
• Offering to upload edited/opened file using another session to the same site, if original session was closed. 1042
• Support for FTP servers with Windows-like paths. 1074
• Verifying TLS/SSL certificates against system Trusted Root Certification Authorities. 1063
• Change: Removing BOM/EOF marks on text mode uploads is configurable and disabled by default. 842
• Support for Diffie-Hellman group exchange with SHA-256. 1067
• SSH core upgraded to PuTTY 0.63 and further to the latest development snapshot (2013-10-09, r10049). It brings following changes:
  • SSH_MSG_UNIMPLEMENTED in response to SSH_MSG_KEXINIT is ignored. kexinit-unimplemented
  • Support for HMAC-SHA-256 as an SSH-2 MAC algorithm (hmac-sha2-256).
  • Bug fix: If the host key isn’t saved, rekeys cause another warning. hostkey-rekey
  • Many other small bug fixes.
• Improvements to session URL syntax:
  • Support for SSH host key fingerprint specification in session URL using connection parameter fingerprint defined by draft-ietf-secsh-scp-sftp-ssh-uri. 93
  • URL session parameter save to initiate site saving.
  • Change: Symbol ; has special meaning in session URL (due to the above changes) and has to be URL-encoded when used as a literal.
  • Change: UTF-8 encoded characters in session URL are supported. 1062
• Detecting Drag&drop shell extension on 64-bit systems. 20
• Bringing an application into foreground, when opening session from commandline and/or from jump in existing WinSCP instance.
• Tolerating invalid local file timestamps. 1064
• Pattern !U in Custom command and PuTTY path works even with password entered only during authentication.
• Do not include information about inability to test, if server IP address is routable, into error messages.
• Improved registration for URL protocols:
  • WinSCP registers itself with Default Programs control panel for protocol URLS sftp://, scp://, ftp:// and ftps:// on Windows Vista and newer.
  • WinSCP handles application specific protocol URLs winscp-sftp://, winscp-scp://, winscp-ftp:// and winscp-ftps://.
  • It is possible to remove protocol registration from Preferences.
  • It is possible to open Default Programs control panel for WinSCP from Preferences.
  • When registering machine-wide, current-user-specific registration that would shadow it is removed.
• When saving session opened from SFTP/SCP URL with host key fingerprint, the host key is saved to cache.
• Not adding UTF-8 BOM to files edited in an Internal editor. 1081
• For FTP sessions over implicit TLS/SSL, Copy URL to Clipboard command uses ftps:// protocol.
• Support FTP servers that require TLS/SSL handshake on transfer connection before responding 1yz to STOR/APPE. 1084
• Support for proprietary SFTP extension statvfs@openssh.com to check disk space usage.
• Consistently logging modification time and size of every transferred file.
• Command Clear caches clears also cache of separate shell session.

• Bug fix: Text mode transfers should not be resumed FTP protocol. 965
• Bug fix: No error is shown in Internal editor, when file cannot be loaded using selected encoding. 971
• Bug fix: Wrong background of path labels with disabled themes. 990
• Bug fix: Cannot import FileZilla sites in folders. 994
• Bug fix: FileZilla site logon type is not imported. 995
• Bug fix: Failure to run WinSCP or open session with .NET assembly after frequent scheduled use. 996
• Bug fix: Failure when using mouse wheel with mouse cursor outside of WinSCP window. 998
• Bug fix: Opening session in PuTTY does not work. 1002
• Bug fix: Failure when disposing Session of .NET assembly. 1008
• Bug fix: Constant CPU usage when queue is empty. 1013
• Bug fix: Option Support for listing if hidden files is not working. 1015
• Bug fix: Incorrect encryption of passwords protected with master password, potentially leading to loss of stored passwords. 1022
• Bug fix: Pending queued transfers were omitted from queue status display on taskbar button. 1030
• Bug fix: Failure when using context menu of disconnected session tab. 1033
• Bug fix: Failure when right-clicking empty area on site tree. 1036
• Bug fix: Failure when opening the first session with Automatically open new session in PuTTY enabled. 1037
• Bug fix: Login dialog got corrupted when changing language on systems with Windows XP style font scaling enabled. Worked-around by disabling runtime language change on such systems. 1038
• Bug fix: Allow SCP fallback session option was not preserved. 1053
• Bug fix: Failure when excessive session timeout or keepalive interval is configured. 1065
• Bug fix: Incorrect Login dialog placement when application was closed on non-primary monitor. 1066
• Bug fix: Local custom commands working with both local and remote files were disabled when file in passive panel was focused only (not selected). 1071
• Bug fix: Failure when connecting through SSH tunnel. 1076
• Bug fix: Failure on start when any site has proxy or tunnel password protected with master password. 1077
• Bug fix: Failure during some operations in FTP over TLS/SSL session. 1078
• Bug fix: Failure when selecting SSH private key. 1080
• Bug fix: Time-based SSH key re-exchange does not work. 1082
• Bug fix: Passwords are lost when any raw session settings is specified in scripting or command-line. 1083
• Bug fix: It was not possible to skip error listing local directory during operation. 1090
• Bug fix: Stray folders on initially inactive page of Location profiles dialog. 1094

• Bug fix: Scripting command synchronize sometimes did not announce that there is nothing to synchronize.
• Bug fix: First Authenticate log entry was trimmed temporarily.
• Bug fix: Separators on toolbars were showing “E” hint.
• Bug fix: Incorrect file icon overlay positioning.
• Bug fix: Not drawing own shortcut overlay over shortcut icons.
• Bug fix: Records on Authentication window were temporarily truncated.
• Bug fix: Selection on file panel was not visually updated when panel received/lost focus.
• Bug fix: Panel path label was not deactivated when focus moved from directory tree to file transfer queue.
• Bug fix: Download command was not highlighted as default in remote directory context menu when Operation to perform on double-click was set to Copy.
• Bug fix: It was not possible to pass sequence of consecutive delimiters when skipping to the next “word” in path input boxes.
• Bug fix: Opened/Closed folder icons on Location profile dialog were swapped.
• Bug fix: Installer was asking for name of program menu folder, although no folder is created anymore.
• Bug fix: Missing labels for some answers in scripting (such as Yes to All/No to All on overwrite confirmation prompt).
• Bug fix: Mismatched warnings about accepting any SSH host key and TLS/SSL certificate respectively.
• Bug fix: Local directory box was missing on Advanced Site Settings dialog.
• Bug fix: When adding password to existing site, new password can possibly be unprotected with master password.
• Bug fix: Dialog boxes were incorrectly considered as submitted when Windows session was closing, causing failures or validation errors, preventing the Windows session from actually closing.
• Bug fix: Edit toolbar buttons were not disabled when only directories were selected.
• Bug fix: When changing configuration storage failed (such as when an INI file could not be removed), storage state on Preferences dialog is not rolled back and some of the other changes to preferences were lost.
• Bug fix: Context menu was popping up after new session was opened when New Session tab was right-clicked.
• Bug fix: Notification about empty transfer queue was not shown.
• Bug fix: Wrong detection of Windows Server 2008 R2 for purposes of timestamp conversion in respect to DST.
• Bug fix: “Never show again” checkbox on information only messages boxes was wrongly labeled “Never ask again”.
• Bug fix: Hostname and Username masks in autoselection rule of transfer settings preset were not working.
• Fixes for large font/high DPI environments:
  • Bug fix: Path labels on Commander interface were using different font than the rest of the window.
  • Bug fix: Status bars on some windows did not resize for large fonts.
  • Bug fix: Some images were not centered.
  • Bug fix: Many dialogs were incorrectly resized for large fonts.
• Bug fix: Failure when validating/executing custom command ending with ! pattern.
• Bug fix: When saving new site with the same generated name as an existing saved site, an overwrite configuration was not requested.
• Bug fix: Wrong icon for Enable Queue Processing command.
• Bug fix: It was not possible to drag a site to a root folder on Login dialog.
• Bug fix: Wrong check for presence of GSSAPI/SSPI on Advanced Site Settings dialog.
• Bug fix: When remote directory was not opened using directory tree, a node of the opened directory was not expanded.
• Bug fix: When some of master-password protected passwords became undecryptable, Sites and Workspaces menus could not be opened.
• Bug fix: When saving site from SFTP/SCP URL, the saved site was not pre-selected on the Login dialog, unless the URL contained host key fingerprint.
• Bug fix: Failure when closing Windows session.
• Bug fix: Environment variables were not expanded in site hostname and username in rare cases.
• Bug fix: Some messages containing & were shown incomplete.