Putty For Mac

Putty is a Terminal emulator that provides support for working with some of the most popular network protocols, such as SSH, FTP, Telnet, and more.

Besides the extensive customization options and the logging capabilities, Putty sets itself apart from other utilities that deal with the same functions due to its capacity to maintain SSH connections.

Right off the bat, in the Putty main window, you must select the network protocol you want to use and provide the hostname/IP address, and the port that should be used.

You get to customize the Terminal and window appearance or adjust the default presets for each connection type. Keep in mind that your adjustments apply only to the current window, so you need to perform the changes for each new connection.

Worth mentioning is that Putty can open multiple windows at the same time, so you can handle more than one connection concomitantly. However, during our tests, we have noticed that if you fail to establish the additional connection, the app quits altogether.

At the same time, the system-wide hotkeys for copying or pasting text in the Putty fields do not seem to work. You can bypass the issue by going through the contextual menu and using the arrow and the return keys to make the appropriate selections.

Once a connection is established, Putty presents you with a new window where you can run command line commands just like you would do in the Terminal. At this point, if you are not happy with the connection’s configuration you must close the window and start all over again.

If you are not content with the font used in the Putty windows by default, the software archive also includes a custom typeface that might prove more suitable.

To use it, you must first deploy the font on your system: just select all the associated font files, activate the contextual menu, choose to open the items in the Font Book application, and confirm the installation.

Last but not least, in the connection configuration window, navigate to the Fonts panel and select the respective font style (to see the entries you must allow Putty to show non-monospaced fonts).

Bottom line, Putty brings the PuTTY project, which is used primarily as an SSH client on the Windows platform, to the Mac. Besides SSH, Putty can handle other network protocols, such as FTP, Telnet, or SCP.

On top of all the appearance customization options, the fact that you can control the connection behavior, and the session logging capabilities, Putty can also make sure that your SSH connections will stay active.