hostpad.github.io/index.html at master · Hostpad/hostpad.github.io · GitHub

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">
<title>Hostpad — a connection manager for Windows</title>
<meta name="description" content="Keep every remote machine in one place and open it with a double click: SSH, SFTP, SCP, FTP, Remote Desktop and VNC, through the client tools you already use.">
<link rel="icon" href="icon.png">

<meta property="og:type" content="website">
<meta property="og:title" content="Hostpad — a connection manager for Windows">
<meta property="og:description" content="Keep every remote machine in one place and open it with a double click. Free software, GPLv3.">
<meta property="og:url" content="https://hostpad.github.io/">
<meta property="og:image" content="https://hostpad.github.io/screenshot.png">
<meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image">

<link rel="stylesheet" href="style.css">
</head>
<body>

<div class="wrap">

<header>
  <img class="logo" src="icon.png" alt="">
  <h1>Hostpad</h1>
  <p class="tagline">
    A connection manager for Windows. Keep every remote machine in one place and
    open it with a double click — SSH, SFTP, SCP, FTP, Remote Desktop or VNC,
    through the client tools you already use.
  </p>
  <div class="buttons">
    <a class="btn primary" href="https://github.com/Hostpad/Hostpad/releases/latest">Download for Windows</a>
    <a class="btn" href="https://github.com/Hostpad/Hostpad">Source on GitHub</a>
  </div>
  <p class="herolink">
    <a href="why/">Why I rewrote AutoPuTTY from scratch &rarr;</a>
  </p>
  <p class="badges">
    <img alt="Latest release" src="https://img.shields.io/github/v/release/Hostpad/Hostpad?color=1E62D0&label=release">
    <img alt="Licence" src="https://img.shields.io/github/license/Hostpad/Hostpad?color=1E62D0">
    <img alt="Windows 10 and 11" src="https://img.shields.io/badge/Windows-10%20%7C%2011-1E62D0">
  </p>
  <img class="shot" src="screenshot.png" alt="The Hostpad window: a folder tree of connections on the left, connection details on the right.">
</header>

<section>
  <h2>An address book, not another terminal</h2>
  <p class="lede">
    Hostpad keeps the list, the credentials and the notes. PuTTY, WinSCP, mstsc
    and your VNC viewer keep doing what they are good at.
  </p>
  <p class="lede">
    The idea comes from <a href="https://github.com/r4dius/AutoPuTTY">AutoPuTTY</a>,
    a tool that did this job well for many years. Hostpad is freely inspired by
    it — no fork, no shared code, written from scratch — and brings the idea up
    to date: folders, real encryption, a Windows 11 interface, and the fields
    that used to be encoded inside other fields turned into fields of their own.
  </p>
</section>

<section>
  <h2>Why this exists</h2>
  <a class="readnext" href="why/">
    <span class="kicker">Read</span>
    <h3>Why I rewrote AutoPuTTY from scratch</h3>
    <p>
      I used AutoPuTTY every working day from 2009, and never found anything
      better: an address book, not another terminal. What changed was not the
      tool — it was my list. Twenty clients, fifty projects, and no folders.
    </p>
  </a>
</section>

<section>
  <h2>What it does</h2>
  <div class="grid">

    <div class="card">
      <h3>Organise</h3>
      <ul>
        <li>Nested folders, and connections that belong to no folder at all</li>
        <li>Drag and drop, rename in place with <kbd>F2</kbd></li>
        <li>Search across name, host, user and notes — the tree flattens while you hunt</li>
        <li>A notes field per connection, for the things you always forget</li>
      </ul>
    </div>

    <div class="card">
      <h3>Connect</h3>
      <ul>
        <li>PuTTY, Remote Desktop, VNC, and WinSCP in SFTP, SCP and FTP modes</li>
        <li>Right click opens the same host with any of the other tools</li>
        <li>SSH jump hosts as real fields, tunnelled through plink</li>
        <li>Private keys, post-login commands, X11 forwarding, screen size, mounted drives</li>
      </ul>
    </div>

    <div class="card">
      <h3>Protect</h3>
      <ul>
        <li>The list is encrypted with AES-256-GCM, always</li>
        <li>Without a master password it is tied to your Windows account through DPAPI: no prompt, and useless to anyone who copies the file</li>
        <li>With one it opens on another computer too — which is what makes a backup worth having</li>
        <li>PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256, with the iteration count stored in the file so it can be raised later</li>
      </ul>
    </div>

    <div class="card">
      <h3>Move data in and out</h3>
      <ul>
        <li>Import from AutoPuTTY: passwords, notes, folders recovered from name prefixes, jump hosts</li>
        <li>Export a password-protected copy, with or without the saved credentials</li>
        <li>Import merges rather than replaces, and asks about names that already exist</li>
      </ul>
    </div>

  </div>
</section>

<section>
  <h2>Install</h2>

  <p class="lede">
    Take <code>Hostpad-&lt;version&gt;-win-x64.exe</code> from the
    <a href="https://github.com/Hostpad/Hostpad/releases/latest">release page</a>
    and run it: it carries the .NET runtime inside and needs nothing installed.
    The smaller builds need the
    <a href="https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download/dotnet/10.0">.NET 10 Desktop Runtime</a>.
  </p>

  <p>Or through <a href="https://scoop.sh">Scoop</a>, which checks the download for you:</p>
<pre><code>scoop bucket add hostpad https://github.com/Hostpad/scoop-bucket
scoop install hostpad/hostpad</code></pre>

  <p>
    Your data lives in <code>%USERPROFILE%\.hostpad</code>. Windows 10 or 11,
    64-bit.
  </p>
</section>

<section>
  <h2>Verifying your download</h2>
  <p class="lede">
    Hostpad is not code-signed, so SmartScreen warns the first time you run it:
    <em>Windows protected your PC</em> → <strong>More info → Run anyway</strong>.
    A certificate costs money the project does not have.
  </p>
  <p class="lede">
    What you get instead is a hash, and a build you can trace. Every release is
    produced by the release workflow on the GitHub runners from the tagged
    commit — no file on a release page is uploaded from a developer machine —
    and the SHA-256 of each file is written into the release notes.
  </p>
<pre><code>Get-FileHash .\Hostpad-&lt;version&gt;-win-x64.exe -Algorithm SHA256</code></pre>
  <p>
    If it matches the release page, the file is the one the workflow built. If it
    does not, do not run it, wherever you got it from.
  </p>
</section>

<section>
  <h2>Free software</h2>
  <p class="lede">
    GPLv3 or later. Fork it, modify it, redistribute it. The <strong>name
    &ldquo;Hostpad&rdquo; is not covered by that licence</strong>: please rename
    your fork so users can tell the projects apart.
  </p>
  <p class="lede">
    The only official releases are published at
    <a href="https://github.com/Hostpad/Hostpad">github.com/Hostpad/Hostpad</a>.
    Copies distributed elsewhere, in particular paid ones, are not from us.
  </p>
  <p class="lede">
    Bug reports, ideas and patches are welcome.
  </p>
</section>

<footer>
  <div class="links">
    <a href="why/">Why</a>
    <a href="https://github.com/Hostpad/Hostpad">GitHub</a>
    <a href="https://github.com/Hostpad/Hostpad/releases/latest">Releases</a>
    <a href="https://github.com/Hostpad/Hostpad/blob/master/CHANGELOG.md">Changelog</a>
    <a href="https://github.com/Hostpad/Hostpad/issues">Issues</a>
    <a href="https://github.com/Hostpad/Hostpad/blob/master/SECURITY.md">Security</a>
    <a href="https://github.com/Hostpad/Hostpad/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md">Contributing</a>
  </div>
  <p>
    Hostpad is freely inspired by <a href="https://github.com/r4dius/AutoPuTTY">AutoPuTTY</a>
    by r4dius, and shares no code with it. Built with
    <a href="https://github.com/lepoco/wpfui">WPF-UI</a> and
    <a href="https://github.com/dotnet/runtime">.NET</a>.
  </p>
  <p>© 2026 Denis Torresan — GNU General Public License v3.0 or later.</p>
</footer>

</div>
</body>
</html>