Remote Desktop Connection Manager (RDCMan): what replaced it

Short answer: Microsoft’s own Remote Desktop Connection Manager (RDCMan) is discontinued and its last build has an unpatched security hole, so Microsoft pulled the download and tells people not to run it. For a tree of saved RDP connections today, Microsoft’s own replacement is the Windows App (formerly Windows 365 / Remote Desktop app), and the strongest third-party option is the open-source mRemoteNG, which also speaks SSH and VNC. Both are covered below, with the import path from an old RDCMan file.

What happened to RDCMan?

RDCMan (RDCMan.exe) was a free Microsoft Sysinternals-adjacent tool for managing many RDP connections in one window, grouped into a tree with credentials set once per group. Microsoft stopped updating it years ago, and in 2020 a security researcher published a remote code execution flaw in how it parses saved .rdg files; opening a malicious one could run code on your machine. Microsoft removed the download from its site and the matching Microsoft Docs page now says the tool is discontinued and warns against using it. The last public build was 2.90 (2.7.2900.0). If you still have the installer, running it is a real risk, not a theoretical one — treat any .rdg file from outside your own machine the way you would treat an untrusted executable.

RDP connection managers compared

For one person with a short list of servers, plain mstsc and a folder of .rdp files is still fine — see how to connect to RDP for the file format and the switches worth setting. A tree with saved credentials earns its keep once you manage more than a handful of machines or hand access to a second person.

Microsoft’s own replacement: the Windows App

Microsoft’s current answer to “a tree of RDP connections” is the Windows App, the renamed and expanded successor to the old Remote Desktop app (Microsoft Store) and the web-based Windows 365 portal. It connects to Azure Virtual Desktop, Windows 365 Cloud PCs, Microsoft Dev Box and — for a plain server — a device you add by its address, the same way RDCMan did.

• Install it from the Microsoft Store on Windows 11/10, or use the web version at windows.cloud.microsoft from any browser, including macOS and Linux.
• Add a PC (not a Cloud PC) by its IP address or host name; it asks for credentials per connection and offers to save them with Windows Credential Manager.
• Connections group under a “Devices” or workspace list rather than RDCMan’s nested tree, so a large flat list of servers is tidier here than a deep hierarchy.

It has no import for RDCMan’s .rdg files, and no per-group credentials the way RDCMan had — each connection keeps its own saved password. For a few dozen servers that is a minor loss; for the RDCMan habit of “log in once per customer, reach twenty servers”, mRemoteNG keeps that model.

mRemoteNG: the closest thing to RDCMan

mRemoteNG is a community-maintained fork of the original mRemote, free and open source, and it is the tool people who liked RDCMan’s tree tend to land on. It keeps connections in a tree with folders, lets a folder carry default credentials that every server inside inherits, and talks RDP, SSH, VNC, HTTP/HTTPS, rlogin, Telnet and raw sockets from the same window — useful once a “Windows servers only” list grows a few Linux boxes that need SSH from Windows instead.

1. 1Install mRemoteNG

   Download the installer or portable build from the project’s own site (mremoteng.org) or its GitHub releases, not a search-ad mirror. The portable build needs no admin rights and keeps its connection file next to the executable.

2. 2Create a folder and set its default credentials

   Right-click the root, New Folder, give it a name such as a customer or environment, then open its properties and fill in Username, Password and Domain. Every server you add under that folder can inherit these instead of repeating them.

3. 3Add a server

   Right-click the folder, New Connection, set the hostname or IP and the protocol (RDP for Windows, SSH for Linux). Leave credentials on Inherit from parent to use the folder’s defaults, or override them per server.

4. 4Encrypt the connection file (recommended)

   mRemoteNG stores connections in confCons.xml under %APPDATA%\mRemoteNG by default. In Tools → Options → Security, set an encryption key so saved passwords are not plain text on disk, or point the connection file at a shared SQL database for a team.

Importing an old RDCMan .rdg file

mRemoteNG’s file menu does not read .rdg directly, but a .rdg is XML, and its server list and group names are plain text inside it. For a handful of servers, open the .rdg in a text editor and copy the hostnames across by hand; for a long list, the file’s <server> and <name> tags are regular enough to pull out with a short script before you retype them into mRemoteNG’s tree. Either way, re-enter credentials fresh rather than trusting anything decoded out of the old file — RDCMan’s password encryption is tied to the Windows user account that saved it and is not something to carry forward.

Staying with the built-in Remote Desktop Connection

If a manager feels like overkill, plain mstsc still works for a short list: save one .rdp file per server in a folder, and Windows remembers the last-used settings and, optionally, the password per file. It has no tree and no shared credentials, but nothing to install and nothing that can leak a database of saved passwords if the machine is ever compromised. The full set of useful .rdp options — resolution, drive redirection, the gateway field — is in connecting to RDP, and running several sessions from one machine at once is covered in multiple RDP sessions on Windows Server.

Managing RDP connections from Linux or macOS

None of the above run natively outside Windows. Remmina (Linux) and the Microsoft Remote Desktop client (macOS, also in the Microsoft Store catalog for iPadOS) both keep a saved list of servers with their own credentials, and the Windows App’s web version at windows.cloud.microsoft works from any browser regardless of operating system, so it doubles as a cross-platform answer once you are tied to a Microsoft account anyway.

Whichever tool you pick

• Encrypt the connection file or vault. A tool that stores a plaintext password list is a single point of failure for every server on it.
• Turn on Network Level Authentication on the servers themselves, so a connection is authenticated before the full RDP session starts. See Network Level Authentication in RDP.
• Put RDP behind a VPN or restrict it by source IP rather than exposing 3389 to the whole internet; a connection manager makes it easier to reach many servers, which also means a stolen laptop reaches many servers.

Frequently asked