The discussion centers on the trade-offs between using macOS Secure Enclave for SSH keys versus traditional methods, with users praising the hardware-bound security but criticizing the lack of portability and backup capabilities. Strong disagreements arise regarding whether the biometric requirement is a feature or a bug for automation, and if the perceived security benefits outweigh the usability friction compared to passphrase-protected keys.
139 readable replies · Supporting reply 1 · Supporting reply 2 · Supporting reply 3 · Supporting reply 4PowerShell
Win32-OpenSSH
Mobile & Desktop2015–2025
PowerShell / Win32-OpenSSH
Win32-OpenSSH
Win32 port of OpenSSH
33Distinct people
52Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
8.4KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Win32 port of OpenSSH
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
- powershell/openssh-portable · linked in 3 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 12:54:37 PM UTC.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year52 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2015-10-19 20:50:50 UTC to 2025-03-09 14:23:41 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 13 | 2 | 11 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 18 | 3 | 15 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 0 | 5 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 12, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
As of Nov 1st 2016, active development on "Windows for OpenSSH" is being done in https://github.com/PowerShell/openssh-portable.
This repo (https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH) is being maintained to keep track of releases and issues
and because it contains the wiki
which has instructions for building.
Release History
Date
Version
Release with source
2026-10-20
10.4.0.0
https://github.com/PowerShell/openssh-portable/tree/v10.4.0.0
2025-10-27
10.0.0.0
https://github.com/PowerShell/openssh-portable/releases/tag/v10.0.0.0
2025-04-18
9.8.3.0
https://github.com/PowerShell/openssh-portable/releases/tag/v9.8.3.0
2025-04-08
9.8.2.0
https://github.com/PowerShell/openssh-portable/releases/tag/v9.8.2.0
2024-10-10
9.8.1.0
https://github.com/PowerShell/openssh-portable/releases/tag/v9.8.1.0
2024-10-08
9.8.0.0
https://github.com/PowerShell/openssh-portable/releases/tag/v9.8.0.0
2023-12-18
9.5.0.0
https://github.com/PowerShell/openssh-portable/releases/tag/v9.5.0.0
2023-10-10
9.4.0.0
https://github.com/PowerShell/openssh-portable/releases/tag/v9.4.0.0
2023-04-17
9.2.2.0
https://github.com/PowerShell/openssh-portable/releases/tag/v9.2.2.0
2023-02-21
9.2.0.0
https://github.com/PowerShell/openssh-portable/releases/tag/v9.2.0.0
2022-12-13
9.1.0.0
https://github.com/PowerShell/openssh-portable/releases/tag/v9.1.0.0
2022-03-22
8.9.1.0
https://github.com/PowerShell/openssh-portable/releases/tag/V8.9.1.0
2022-03-17
8.9.0.0
https://github.com/PowerShell/openssh-portable/releases/tag/v8.9.0.0
2021-05-26
8.6.0.0
https://github.com/PowerShell/openssh-portable/releases/tag/v8.6.0.0
2019-12-17
8.1.0.0
https://github.com/PowerShell/openssh-portable/releases/tag/v8.1.0.0
2019-06-23
8.0.0.0
https://github.com/PowerShell/openssh-portable/releases/tag/v8.0.0.0
2019-01-11
7.9.0.0
https://github.com/PowerShell/openssh-portable/releases/tag/v7.9.0.0
2018-07-26
7.7.2.0
https://github.com/PowerShell/openssh-portable/releases/tag/v7.7.2.0
Code of Conduct
Please see our Code of Conduct before participating in this project.
Security Policy
For any security issues, please see our Security Policy.
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
52 sourcesA bit late, but there was a bug in the GitHub Win32 OpenSSH that was introduced in last October 2024 cumulative update. This was precipitated by a PR from September 2023. It performs a permissions check on the logs and other folders, and apparently enforces the permissions it expects, as the service crashes/does not start. This seems to affect Windows platforms more as opening an affected location in Windows Explorer probably prompts the user that access is denied, and would you like to update the permissions. https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/issues/2282
In Github scam investigation: Thousands of “mods” and “cracks” stealing dataBecause OpenSSH on Windows is a shitshow. Mounted SMB shares can’t be accessed because they’re tied to login sessions, and you can’t mount them from within an SSH session (IIRC in theory you can, but in practice it never worked for me).[1] Which means ffmpeg is practically useless if you need input that you can’t (e.g. livestream) or don’t want to copy in advance, or need output in realtime.
At least that’s why I built something similar in Go for myself.
Before anyone mentions WSL: it either didn’t support GPU passthrough or was very difficult to configure when I set this up a few years ago, don’t know about current status. And you can’t call Windows executables from WSL when you SSH into it.
[1] https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/issues/139
In Show HN: FFmpeg-over-IP – Connect to remote FFmpeg serversA request for an official answer on CALs for Microsofts' SSH port is about to turn 6 years old:
https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/issues/926
In Windows NT 3.1 on Dec Alpha AXPFor Windows, it seems it's possible[0, see footnote], however there are problems like general incompatibilities [1], and official support status is " We have this in our backlog. At this point it's not prioritized.".
0: https://github.com/tavrez/openssh-sk-winhello
0.footnote: "Windows Hello also supports other types of authenticators like internal TPM device(if they support generating ECDSA or Ed25519 keys, they can be used instead of FIDO/U2F security keys)."
1: https://github.com/tavrez/openssh-sk-winhello/issues
2: https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/issues/1804#issu...
In Use TouchID to Authenticate Sudo on macOSAnother solution for windows: The support is already there within 8.9.1.0 beta release: https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/releases
You must then use the SSH installed within 'C:\Program Files\OpenSSH\ssh.exe' and not the builtin within system32.
In How to Store an SSH Key on a YubikeyCan you point the right person to this internally for the real OpenSSH shipped with Windows? I'm actually curious how licensing works out for 3rd party servers like Caddy-SSH.
Licensing / Multi-user access / CAL | https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/issues/926 (Oct 2017)
In Show HN: Caddy-SSHKrypt pretty much works all the time for me, with the main reason I still use it being that WSL can't use the host OS's ssh-agent for logging in without aliasing ssh to ssh.exe. That and the Windows ssh agent itself can't use native Windows Hello APIs[0] to have an experience similar to secretive on Mac where the keys never leave the device and are protected by the secure processor in the device.
0: https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/issues/1804#issu...
In 1Password for SSH and Git (Beta)Yubikey is probably the sanest cross-platform solution. Assuming you're using an updated beyond Microsoft's default version, which you'll need to get from https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/releases to have support for USB keys, of course. Hopefully MS will update their included version at some point soon.
From there, it's as simple as telling the .ssh/config file to use the key from your Yubikey and you can use the same config file on any machine you have OpenSSH.
In Tell HN: GitHub no longer supporting unauthenticated `git://`> I don't know how to write a shell script on a host computer that launches Windows 10 and runs commands with an MSYS2 Mingw64 shell.
Launching a VM via shell script is trivial. And you can install OpenSSH on Windows 10: https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH
In How to fuck up software releasesIf you can figure out how to reproduce the issue, I'm sure the team would accept a bug report at https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH
In “Python's batteries are leaking”you might want to create an issue for their devs to look into.
https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/issues
In Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSHIt would be great if openssh integrated into Windows properly. I can't ssh in as a user with any real permissions.
https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/issues/139
In Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSHEven right now, you can install sshd and/or use the client by adding them as a feature, or by installing manually.
https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH
and
https://github.com/PowerShell/openssh-portable
In Windows Server 2019 Includes OpenSSHMicrosoft has ported OpenSSH, at least on Windows 10 you can install it as a Windows feature, or pull it from GitHub https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/releases
In Sr.ht, the hacker's forge, now open for public alphaShowing the 15 most recent of 52 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.