SSH that opens at the speed of a binary.

A native SSH client with a real terminal, an SFTP browser and editor, and a live system monitor inside one window. No Electron, no account, no telemetry. Open it, connect, work.

Source on GitHub

v1.1.0·see all artifacts·

ShadowSSH window with file browser, code editor and the system monitor showing CPU, memory, disk and network in real time

01 · Terminal

A real terminal, drawn locally.

ShadowSSH ships a full VT terminal inside the app, built on libvterm. Colors, scrollback, mouse selection, copy and paste, control codes — all rendered natively, no web view between you and the bytes.

When you do want the system one, ShadowSSH drops you straight into Terminal.app, Windows Terminal, or whatever you have set as $TERMINAL. One click, same session.

  • Boots instantly. SDL2 + ImGui, no JavaScript runtime to warm up.
  • Real keyboard semantics. Ctrl+C / Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+D reach the remote shell, not the host OS.
  • Honest scrollback. Select, copy, paste with the muscle memory you already have.
ShadowSSH
▾ Terminal▸ System Monitor
mattia@bastion:~/services/api$ systemctl status api

● api.service — ShadowSSH demo daemon

Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/api.service; enabled)

Active: active (running) since today 09:14:21 UTC

Memory: 412.8M peak: 487.1M

mattia@bastion:~/services/api$
ShadowSSH
▾ File Browser
Path: /var/www/api
  • [D].cache—
  • [D]node_modules—
  • [D]src—
  • [F].env247 B
  • [F]package.json1.8 KB
  • [F]server.ts4.1 KB
  • [F]tsconfig.json612 B
▾ server.tsmodified
  1  import Fastify from 'fastify'
  2
  3  const app = Fastify({ logger: true })
  4
  5  app.get('/health', async () => { ok: true })
  6
  7  app.listen({ port: 8080 })
typescript · utf-8 · 4-space⌘ S saves & uploads

02 · SFTP

Edit remote files without leaving the window.

ShadowSSH ships a built-in SFTP file browser and a tabbed editor with syntax highlighting. Open a config, change a value, hit ⌘ S — the file is saved and uploaded back over the same SSH connection. No download, no rsync, no second tool.

Recent paths and recent hosts are remembered between sessions, so the second visit is two keystrokes away from where you left off on the first.

  • Syntax highlighting that adapts to the file you opened. JS, TS, Python, Rust, Go, YAML, JSON, conf.
  • Save-and-upload in one stroke. ⌘ S on macOS, Ctrl+S elsewhere.
  • Direct uploads from disk via the path bar — no separate transfer pane.

03 · System Monitor

The numbers that actually matter, live.

A dedicated SSH channel pulls CPU, load average, memory, root disk and network throughput from the remote host and renders them right next to your terminal. No extra ssh into top, no second window.

When the box you are working on is unhealthy, you know inside the first second you connect.

  • Real numbers, every second. No averaging tricks. The bar reflects the box.
  • CPU, load, memory, disk, network. The five you care about, no clutter.
  • Uptime + interface name shown, because half the bugs you debug are answered by these two.
ShadowSSH
▸ Terminal▾ System Monitor

CPU / Load

8%

load: 3.82 · 3.58 · 2.81

Disk Usage (Root)

36.1%

18.2 GB / 50.4 GB

Memory Usage

709 / 1907 MB

swap: 0 / 0 MB

Network Traffic

Iface: ens5

Down: 20.6 KB/s·Up: 8.2 KB/s

Uptime: 59d 17h 49m

04 · Privacy

Honest software, no strings.

ShadowSSH was built because the alternatives quietly route your sessions through someone else's cloud. This one does not. The four lines below are not aspirations, they are how the code actually behaves.

No telemetry, ever

ShadowSSH never phones home. No analytics, no auto-update beacon, no metrics endpoint. The binary you download is the binary you run.

OS-native secret store

Credentials live in macOS Keychain, Windows DPAPI, or a secured file on Linux. ShadowSSH reads them when you connect and forgets them when you close.

Strict host-key checking

Known hosts only. No silent first-connection trust, no “type yes to ignore” prompts. A fingerprint that does not match is a fingerprint that does not connect.

Your keys, your machine

Private keys are read from disk and stay in process memory. They are never serialised to a cloud, a remote agent, or a vendor's server.

05 · Download

One archive, extract and run.

ShadowSSH ships as a single archive per platform. Unpack it anywhere, run the binary, you are connected. No installer, no elevated permissions, no background services left behind.

Latest stablev1.1.0

The macOS build is ad-hoc signed; the Windows build is not yet notarised. The first launch shows the usual Gatekeeper / SmartScreen warning. Confirm once and the OS remembers it for every subsequent launch.