Use a Windows 11 PC Instead of a VPS

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If you do not want to rent a VPS, you can turn a Windows 11 computer into an SSH server and use it as the SMS synchronization target.

  1. Open Settings on your Windows 11 PC and go to System > Optional features. Click View features, search for "OpenSSH Server", select it and click Next > Install.
  2. After installation, open the Start menu, type services.msc and press Enter. In the Services window, find "OpenSSH SSH Server", open its properties, set Startup type to Automatic and click Start. Confirm with OK.
  3. Allow SSH through the firewall: open Windows Defender Firewall with Advanced Security, create a new Inbound Rule for Port, choose TCP and port 22, and allow the connection for the profiles you use (Domain, Private, Public).
  4. Find the PC's IP address by opening Terminal or Command Prompt and running ipconfig. Note the IPv4 address of the active network adapter.
  5. Create or choose a folder for SMS backups, for example C:\sms2vps\inbox, and make sure your Windows user has read/write permissions to that folder. You can create it from PowerShell or an SSH session with: mkdir C:\sms2vps\inbox.
  6. In SMS2VPS on your Android device, open the VPS Settings view and use the following values:
    • Host/IP address: the IPv4 address you found with ipconfig
    • Port: 22
    • Username: your Windows account name
    • Authentication: your Windows account password, or an SSH private key if you prefer key-based login (paste the full key including the BEGIN/END lines).
    • Remote directory: C:\sms2vps\inbox (the folder created above)

    When the target is a Windows OpenSSH server, always use Windows-style paths such as C:\sms2vps\inbox in the SMS2VPS settings, not Linux-style paths like /cygdrive/c/....

  7. From another device (or Termux on your Android phone), test the connection with an SSH client, for example: ssh your_username@your_windows_ip. If the login works and you can see the C:\sms2vps\inbox folder, you are ready to use SMS2VPS with this PC.

Set up the OpenSSH server from PowerShell

Alternatively, you can install and configure the OpenSSH server on Windows 11 directly from an elevated PowerShell window using the following commands:

# 1. Install the OpenSSH server capability
Add-WindowsCapability -Online -Name OpenSSH.Server~~~~0.0.1.0
# 2. Register the sshd service (note the spaces after binPath= and start=)
sc.exe create sshd binPath= C:\Windows\System32\OpenSSH\sshd.exe start= auto
# 3. Start the sshd service
Start-Service sshd
# 3b. Verify that the service is running
Get-Service sshd
# 4. Set the service to start automatically
Set-Service -Name sshd -StartupType 'Automatic'
# 5. Open port 22 in Windows Firewall for incoming SSH connections
New-NetFirewallRule -Name sshd -DisplayName 'OpenSSH Server (sshd)' -Enabled True -Direction Inbound -Protocol TCP -Action Allow -LocalPort 22
# 6. Generate an SSH key pair for SMS2VPS (recommended)
ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "sms2vps-key"
# 7. Add the public key to authorized_keys on this Windows PC
type $env:USERPROFILE\.ssh\id_ed25519.pub >> $env:USERPROFILE\.ssh\authorized_keys
# 8. Find the IPv4 address of your Windows 11 PC
ipconfig

Once the SSH connection test succeeds and SMS2VPS has saved your settings, you can activate SMS synchronization and store all messages directly on your Windows 11 machine.

To verify that everything works, send a test SMS to your phone and on the Windows PC run Get-ChildItem C:\sms2vps\inbox and Get-Content C:\sms2vps\inbox\*.txt in PowerShell to see the saved message files.