martin wrote:

There exactly "in the app" do you paste it? And what do you paste? The password? Or session URL? In session URL, the plus sign needs to be URL-encoded.
https://winscp.net/eng/docs/session_url#special

Please see the three screenshots in REVERSE order, due to the way they are uploading:
1. Is where the issue manifests. Again, if there is no "+" symbol used in the password, it would not make any issues and it will load the SFTP.
2. Is in the middle of it loading
3. The main window of the app. In it I click ctrl + v and it automatically load the user name, password and the respective host, port, etc.


I am pasting the entire SFTP link, e.g.
sftp://hq624545:HT3zh+RZ3sz+LX8m@xxxx-ab.xz.cat.com:2222/

Do I have to encode the "+" sign every single time? If yes, then this defeats the purpose, as I can do it much faster by simply copying the password and giving it to the prompt, but that's what I've been trying to resolve in the first place.

There exactly "in the app" do you paste it? And what do you paste? The password? Or session URL? In session URL, the plus sign needs to be URL-encoded.
https://winscp.net/eng/docs/session_url#special

If there is + sign in the password, the SFTP won't load by pasting with Ctrl+V in the app. It will rather show additional dialog box where the password needs to be entered manually.