PuTTY Tray: Redux

PuTTY Tray (or PuTTYtray) is an unofficial branch of PuTTY, the terminal program. It builds on an already excellent application adding many features that make significant improvements including the ability to minimize the application to the system tray and turn URLs into clickable links within the terminal window.

It was originally published at http://haanstra.eu/putty/ by Barry Haanstra and was based on the PuTTY 0.60 codebase which was last updated in November 2007, but the project was abandoned by the original author. Since PuTTY author Simon Tantham recently started releasing updates to PuTTY with some significant changes, I decided to adapt PuTTY Tray’s functionality to the new codebase, hence the new moniker — PuTTY Tray: Redux. This new branch was originally published under a blog post but I decided to move the most current information into this static page.

One of the original PuTTY Tray changes (portability) has been omitted because it was unnecessary and the code implementing it was problematic. A complete list of enhancements follows (with the abandoned change listed for history):

• New default icon
• Minimizing to the system tray (on CTRL + minimize, always or directly on startup)
• Application and tray icon customizable per connection
• Blinks tray icon when a bell signal is received
• URL hyperlinking
• Easy access to the ‘always on top’ setting (in the system menu)
• Configurable window transparency based on an excellent transparency hack — it can even use Windows Aero (if available)!
• Improved bold font handling when using Cleartype (e.g. Consolas) fonts
• Portability: optionally stores session configuration in files (for example: on a USB drive) like portaPuTTY
  I had no need for this since I could simply export/import the registry settings to keep my connections portable — plus this functionality can be achieved using PortableApps: PuTTY.
• Configurable auto-reconnect when your PC wakes up from stand-by or disconnection (like rebooting a remote server.)

Download it!

Source Code

The source code is now hosted at Gitorious.

Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions or comments.

From the original site

PuTTY Tray is a combination of the best SSH client and some of the best patches written for it. It started out as a simple trayicon patch, created after I read that this feature would never make it into the ‘standard’ PuTTY.

After a while I started merging it with other patches, to create the ultimate PuTTY. Because I could never have created PuTTY Tray as it is today without these patches, I would like to thank:

• Everaldo, for making the beautiful Crystal SVG icon set from which I derived the PuTTY Tray icon
• Samuli Gröhn, for making the NuTTY hyperlink patch
• Jakub Kotrla because he invented the PuTTY File patch
  This code has been omitted.
• warp13.co.uk, for the reconnect patch.
• dwalin.ru, for parts of the TuTTY session icon code
• All the people who are sending me emails with great suggestions

Please note
If this software does not work as expected, eats your PC or kills your cat, you should know that it comes without warranty of any kind. You install it at your own risk. Also, please do not bother any of the people mentioned above with questions about PuTTY Tray. If it does not work, let me know, or try the original version.

Comments (9) »

1. jomcty says:

   2/23/2012 at 8:26 am

   Thanks for the update Toby!

   Reply to this Comment
2. Toby Simmons says:

   2/23/2012 at 9:18 am

   No problem!

   Reply to this Comment
3. John says:

   2/27/2012 at 8:42 am

   Hi Toby,

   Thx a lot for the updated version. What I like is the possibility to start your puttyTray from commandline and it directly starts minimized in the tray. This behaviour was already in the original puttyTray version.

   The version of Chris West has a 64-bit exe but his puttyTray wont go to the tray automatically if started from commandline. Can be setup in the options but for me it needs to minimize on default otherwise I can use the original PuTTy :D

   Just the info of the day ;)

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4. SysAdmins Everywhere says:

   3/1/2012 at 7:13 am

   thank you!

   Reply to this Comment
5. Jason says:

   3/10/2012 at 6:19 pm

   What’s the chance of getting the adb-terminal functionality added from https://github.com/sztupy/adbputty/ ?

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6. Josh Davis says:

   4/12/2012 at 1:04 pm

   Your version wins over Chris West’s, because you made the session window larger.
   Any expansion you can do for resizing, or handling 50+ sessions would be appreciated.
   (proper subfolders – unlike KiTTY, etc).

   Thanks for your work!

   Reply to this Comment
   • Toby Simmons says:

     4/12/2012 at 1:24 pm

     Thanks, Josh.

     My favorite way to handle sessions is to use PuTTY Tray with PuTTY Session Manager. It has full nested tree support and works really well, puts an icon in the system tray where you can right click and load any saved session.

     Reply to this Comment
7. Jason says:

   5/9/2012 at 4:59 pm

   Whats the possibility of incorporating leputty patch into it? I use the zmodem functions all of the time.

   Reply to this Comment
8. bitman says:

   5/17/2012 at 4:55 am

   please, don’t remove the “portable” feature of save sessions in files. It’s a very cool one and I need it. PuTTY Session Manager is NOT PORTABLE :(

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