How To Enable and Use Native OpenSSH Client on Windows 10

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In case you haven’t known, Windows 10 now has a native OpenSSH client that you can use to remote SSH into Linux machines. It’s a new feature just hidden and not that obvious to spot. It’s one that can finally put Putty to bed, maybe.

To enable OpenSSL client, open Settings app, go to Apps and click Manage Optional Features link.

Settings Apps Manage optional features - How To Enable and Use Native OpenSSH Client on Windows 10

Click Add a feature button.

Settings Apps Add a feature - How To Enable and Use Native OpenSSH Client on Windows 10

Scroll down the list until you find “OpenSSH Client“, click on it and hit the Install button.

Settings Apps add OpenSSH client - How To Enable and Use Native OpenSSH Client on Windows 10

It takes about 30 seconds to get it installed and enabled.

To use it, simply open a Command Prompt window, and type ssh followed by the switches and parameters like below:

OpenSSH client ssh - How To Enable and Use Native OpenSSH Client on Windows 10

For example, to SSH to a remote machine named domain.com with username kent,

ssh [email protected]

As a sysadmin who manages web servers through Putty for years, this is definitely the right direction for Microsoft. While Putty is still better, a native OpenSSH client can also be improved by Microsoft over the time.

1 COMMENT

  1. I had to add c:\windows\system32\OpenSSH\ to my PATH as well to get this to work. But nice to have it available now.

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