ConchshellFree · no account, no subscription
SSH, SFTP, FTPS and RDP on your Mac. One window.
A terminal, a dual-panel file manager and a remote desktop in the same application — with your credentials in an encrypted vault instead of a text file, once you set the vault up. Every desktop, about 10 MB to download, nothing to sign up for.
01 — WHAT IT REPLACES
One window instead of three apps and a text file of passwords
Most people arrive here from one of two setups. Both work. Both cost something.
Termius as described on its own pricing page and documentation on 20 August 2026; the details are on the Termius comparison. Size on disk is the installed macOS application, measured as shown below.
Eighteen megabytes, not five hundred
Installed size on macOS. One application that does the work of three, and still the smaller install.
Measured on 3 August 2026, macOS 26.5.2, with `du -sm` on the installed application bundle.
Memory: 286 MB against 1.4 GB
Four SSH sessions to the same host in each client, measured ten minutes after connecting. Counted across the whole process tree, helper processes included — the main process alone is 35 MB, and reporting that number would flatter us by a factor of eight.
Measured 3 August 2026 on macOS 26.5.2, Apple silicon. phys_footprint of the main process plus every process it is responsible for, median of three samples thirty seconds apart. The comparison is with a browser-engine client; natively written clients are lighter than both and are not in scope here.
02 — THE WINDOW
Four surfaces, one window
Everything below is in the free build. There is no other build.
Terminal
Service status over SSH
Local and remote, side by side
Files
Seeing the machine
An access log tailed over SSH
Getting there, and staying there
03 — CREDENTIALS
The part that took the longest to build
XCHACHA20-POLY1305 · ARGON2ID
Passwords in a vault, not a text file
Credentials live in an encrypted vault with independent key slots over one data key. The interface can store a credential and delete it. It cannot read one back, because no command exists that would answer. Whenever the app starts with a saved password still unencrypted, it offers to create the vault; until you accept, saved passwords stay unencrypted in the application's local data. On a Mac, iPhone, iPad or Android device one tap or click creates it with the system keychain; on Windows and Linux the app uses no system keychain, so the vault takes a master passphrase.
HOST · PORT · USER · PROXY · JUMP
A password in the vault only goes where it was saved for
Each credential stored in the vault is bound to its whole route. Point the connection somewhere else and it is refused — even when the request comes from inside the application. A password still kept unencrypted gets no such binding.
OS-DRAWN CONFIRMATION
Your system approves host keys, not the app
When a server's key changes, the confirmation is drawn by the operating system. A compromised window cannot repaint it, cannot click it, and cannot make a key replacement look like a first connection. Closing that window without pressing a button counts as a refusal, on every platform. Up to version 2.16.0, closing it on Windows and Linux counted as trusting the key, and so did Back on Android; 2.17.0 fixed that.
04 — MOVING IN
Your connections do not have to be retyped
Switching clients usually means an evening of copying hostnames. It does not here.
Free, and it stays free.
No accounts, no subscription, no hidden telemetry — usage statistics are on by default on computers and Android, and one switch turns them off; on iPhone and iPad they stay off until you agree. Everything on this page is free; syncing your connections between machines is a one-time $19.