PuTTY download connection Manager // Putty ssh client download

PuTTY Logo This article is part of the on-going Software For Geeks series.
PuTTY Connection Manager was mentioned in the 12 PuTTY add-ons that we discussed a while back. One of the major missing features in PuTTY is the ability to display multiple sessions in Tabs.
PuTTY CM displays multiple PuTTY sessions in Tabs. In this article, let us review in detail the 5 powerful features of the PuTTY Connection Manager that will make PuTTY more enjoyable.

Download PuttyCM: PuttyCM website seems to be down for some time now. Until that site comes backup, you can download puttycm.exe that I’ve been using.

Download the PuTTY Connection Manager. PuTTY CM is written in C#. You need .NET 2.0. When you install PuTTY CM for the first time, you need to specify the location of the PuTTY executable.

Feature 1: Display Multiple PuTTY Sessions in Tab

If the PuTTY Connection Manager opens the original PuTTY in a separate window, instead of opening as a TAB, please go to Tools -> Options -> Select the check-box “Enable additional timing for PuTTY capture (ms)” -> set the value to 500 ms. This will open the PuTTY window inside the TAB as shown below.

Fig: PuTTY sessions in Tabs

Feature 2: Dockable Windows for PuTTY Sessions

Apart from displaying multiple PuTTY sessions in Tabs, PuTTY CM can also show different PuTTY sessions in panels.
In the example below, to move the qa-box PuTTY session to the bottom panel, left-click on the qa-box tab and hold the mouse until it displays the panel symbol (which will be like a Plus symbol) in the middle of the screen. Now move the mouse to the bottom of the plus, which will high-light the bottom portion of the screen indicating that the qa-box session will be moved to the bottom panel.

Fig: Select the Panel to dock a PuTTY session

Now, release the mouse, which will move the qa-box to the bottom panel as shown below.

Fig: Selected PuTTY session docked in proper panel

Using the similar technique you can move all the PuTTY sessions to different panels as shown below.

Fig: Multiple PuTTY Sessions docked appropriately

Feature 3: Encrypted PuTTY Configuration Database

By default, PuTTY session informations are stored in the windows registry, which are not encrypted. If you want to keep the session information (ip-address, session name etc., ) encrypted, you can use the database encryption feature available in the PuTTY CM