If you open up a lot of PuTTY windows just to keep connections open, you might be interested in an updated version that supports minimizing to the system tray. I find this very useful for opening tunnels that I wouldn’t otherwise need to interact with on the desktop.

This new version also supports some really great options, including auto-reconnect, transparency and hyperlinking support.

If you open up the settings window and go to Window \ Behaviour, you can change some interesting settings.

The first setting I’d recommend is to check the box for “Accept single-click to restore from tray”, which makes it much easier to restore the PuTTY window.

If you change “Show tray icon” to Always, PuTTY will only minimize to the tray while holding down the Ctrl key and clicking on the Minimize button.

The transparency support can be turned on under Window \ Window transparency options. Just change the number to something less than 255 and click Apply.

Not entirely useful… but interesting.

This is a great update, well worth switching over to.

Download PuTTY Tray from xs4all.nl