Filezilla on Mac: SFTP with passwordless authentication?

You can now use FileZilla -> Preferences -> Connection -> SFTP which will allow you to import your private key.

Recent versions of OSX have the ssh-agent built-in and there is no need to start it separately.

In my case I simply had to change the logon type to "interactive" in the sites settings in FileZilla and choose SFTP as the protocol.

FileZilla apparently talks with the ssh-agent and handles the authentication. This is better than importing the key to FileZilla, since this way you can keep the file password protected.

You don't need .ppk or .pem keys.

1. Add your private key to the SSH agent. In Mac, this is ssh-add ~/.ssh/[your private key] - if you haven't created SSH keys then run this command first ssh-keygen -t rsa -f ~/.ssh/[give a name for your keys] -C "[your email]"
2. 1) Open FileZilla 2) Type host: sftp://[host ip address you want to connect to] 3) Type username: [your username] 4) Leave password and port fields empty 5) Click Quickconnect

FileZilla will be able to use the keys you've loaded in the SSH agent automatically.