PuTTY Tray

System administrators are familiar with SSH clients and PuTTY is most of the times in their tool belt. PuTTY Tray is aimed as an improved version of the original client, sporting some features that may be appreciated by some users.

Thanks to being portable, the program does not need to be installed on the system in order to benefit from its functionality and simply double-clicking the executable file launches the application window.

This means that it leaves no traces on the operating system and users can carry it on a removable drive in order to use it on other computers.

At a first glance it may seem like there isn’t much difference but a closer look reveals the modifications. The forked version makes available more connection types and adds CygTerm and ADB (Android Debug Bridge) to the original SSH, Telnet, Raw, Serial and Rlogin.

Another difference between the two applications is support for URL hyperlinking in the improved version. The options allow defining when the links should be underlined in order to reveal themselves and the application that should be used to open them.

PuTTY Tray can minimize to the tray area and there is the possibility to show the icon at all times as well as to restore it with a single mouse click.

Additional customization options also include modification of the application window. This comes in handy when trying to check the content behind it.

Built into the program is PuTTY Key Generator, a tool that can create a public/private key (SSH1/2) pair.

PuTTY Tray may look like it is not an improvement compared to PuTTY, but the extra features and functions are useful and easy to adapt to.