ConchshellWhat to use when Royal TSX stops fitting
Nobody shops for a Royal TSX replacement in the abstract. You start looking at a wall: the eleventh connection, the Linux box that has no client, a second licence for the Windows machine, or an update that turned out not to be covered by maintenance that had quietly run out. This page is about that moment and about the evening of retyping that follows it. What it says about Royal TSX was read from royalapps.com, docs.royalapps.com, community.royalapps.com and MacUpdate on 20 August 2026.
If the wall was the eleventh connection
Shareware Mode never expires and asks for nothing, but the ceiling is fixed: no more than 10 connections, no more than 10 credentials, one open document. That is a homelab, not a job. On 20 August 2026 the next step was €49.00 excluding VAT for an Individual licence, macOS only.
Conchshell has no gate in that place at all. The application is free on macOS, Windows and Linux, with no tiers, no trial and nothing that greys out later, and the only paid feature is syncing saved connections between your own machines for $19 once at the introductory price, $29 afterwards.
If the wall was the renewal notice
The licence is perpetual for the version you bought and carries a year of maintenance. After that you keep the last version released while it was active, and a newer one needs a renewal at 50% of list price, available up to six months after expiry. Royal Apps said in writing in April 2026 that it is not going to subscriptions, which is more than most vendors commit to.
The seam still catches people. One MacUpdate reviewer describes installing an update and only afterwards being told the licence did not cover the new version; that is a single account, not a measured pattern, but it is what dated maintenance feels like when it lapses. Here there is one payment of $19, updates are included, and the key is verified on your own machine with no network involved.
If the wall was the Mac
Royal TSX is the macOS product. Windows is Royal TS, bought separately, €49.00 each or €79.00 for the pair on 20 August 2026, and the feature lists are not identical. Linux has no client at all, and the rewrite that would bring one had no public beta and no release date on 20 August 2026.
Conchshell is one application from one codebase: macOS on Apple silicon and Intel, Windows, Linux as .deb, .rpm and .AppImage, with the same JSON bundle moving between them, and Android as an APK from the site. The honest gap is the stores and iOS. Royal TSi and Royal TSD are in the stores today; the Conchshell Android build is in no store and there is no iOS build.
If the wall was the app itself
Royal TSX is plugin-based, and a fresh install downloads the RDP, terminal and file-transfer plugins from the vendor before it can connect to anything, so an offline machine needs the documented workaround. Their community forum carries threads about crashes, freezes and a window that turns sluggish after days of uptime. Engineers reply there by name and ship fixes, so read that as a recurring theme rather than a verdict.
Conchshell is 9.1 MB to download and 18 MB on disk on Apple silicon, 20.6 MiB for the Intel build, with the protocols compiled in rather than fetched afterwards. The exception is the Windows installer, which pulls Microsoft Edge WebView2 from the network if the machine does not already have it. Four SSH sessions measured 286 MB across 7 processes on 3 August 2026, against 1388 MB and 15 processes for an Electron client on the same machine.
What does not survive the move
Four things do not come across, and it is cheaper to know them before you start. The .rtsz document, because nothing here reads that format. The saved passwords, which are in no export on either side and are retyped once each. Any credential integration, so a connection that pulls its password from CyberArk or a 1Password vault at connect time has no counterpart here. And ssh-agent, which Conchshell does not support at all, so an encrypted key is selected and unlocked per connection.
The RDP tab needs its own line. Conchshell connects over CredSSP, which is NLA, with no fallback path, so a host with NLA switched off will not connect and nothing here claims parity with mstsc or with FreeRDP.
What you get in the window instead
An SSH terminal on a real PTY, with four-way splits, tab groups, session restore and local shell tabs that remember their working directory. A two-pane file manager over SFTP and FTPS with a transfer queue that shows progress, speed and ETA, directory compare and synchronisation, and remote files opened in your own editor and saved back. RDP over CredSSP. Live CPU, memory, disk, process and network figures for the host, and a log viewer with several sources at once, level filters, regex and live tail.
Access is the usual set: proxies over HTTP CONNECT and SOCKS4, 4a and 5, SSH jump hosts that carry their own credentials, and auto-reconnect when a link drops. The vault underneath is XChaCha20-Poly1305 keyed by Argon2id, host keys go into a TOFU fingerprint store, and FTPS runs on rustls against the system root certificates, with certificate pinning not implemented yet.
Who actually gains by moving
- You crossed ten hosts and do not want to buy a licence per operating system to carry on.
- Half your machines are not Macs, and you want the same window, the same shortcuts and the same import file on each of them.
- You want the vault encrypted by default: XChaCha20-Poly1305 with Argon2id, key slots for the passphrase, the system keychain and a recovery code, and no command in the interface that reads a saved password back.
- You want to be able to leave again. Connections, folders, profiles and settings come out as a readable JSON bundle, credentials deliberately excluded.
- You want an application rather than a plugin host: 18 MB on disk on Apple silicon, and no plugin download standing between a fresh install and an RDP session.
Reasons to stay where you are
- Your estate is not only Unix. Hyper-V and VMware consoles, TeamViewer, Windows services, processes and event logs are all tabs in Royal TSX, and none of them exist here.
- Your RDP needs a gateway, several monitors or a redirected drive or printer. Conchshell does RDP over CredSSP only, with no fallback, so a host with NLA disabled will not connect at all.
- Your passwords live in CyberArk, Delinea or Keeper, or in a 1Password or KeePass vault that Royal TSX opens directly. Nothing here reads any of those, and there is no ssh-agent support either.
- Your team shares one connection document on a file share, with merge, shared credentials and per-person overrides. Conchshell has no sharing of any kind; its sync moves your own connections between your own machines.
- You need the phone apps, the invoice and a company behind them. Royal TSi and Royal TSD are published and Royal Apps GmbH runs a support portal; the Conchshell Android build ships as an APK from the site rather than a store, there is no iOS build, and its RDP is CredSSP (NLA) only, with no fallback for a host that has NLA switched off.
Getting off Royal TSX in an evening
- Decide the scope first. Rebuild the twenty hosts you touch weekly, not the whole document, and leave Royal TSX installed with the .rtsz untouched as your fallback.
- Pull the inventory. The All Objects CSV export gives name and description only, so read host, port and username from the connection properties, or run the RoyalDocument.PowerShell module with Export-Csv.
- Install Conchshell from /download/. On macOS 13 and later the first launch goes through System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway; on macOS 12 the path is System Preferences → Security & Privacy → General.
- Rebuild the list, either by typing the hosts in or by writing a JSON bundle in the shape Conchshell exports, then importing it: connections, folders, profiles and settings all travel in that one file.
- Wire up the keys and passwords. Point each connection at the key file already on disk, add the passphrase if it is encrypted, and retype each password once, which binds it to host, port, user, proxy chain and jump host.
- Run a week on both. Keep Royal TSX for whatever has not moved, and only uninstall it when nothing has sent you back for a fortnight.
Questions people actually ask
Is this Royal TSX alternative actually free?
The application is free on macOS, Windows and Linux, with no account, no subscription and no trial to run out. One feature is paid: syncing saved connections between your own machines, $19 once at the introductory price and $29 later. Nothing else is gated and nothing stops working after a period, and that $19 is a purchase with updates included, not a rental.
Do I have to create an account?
There is no account to create. Nothing signs in, nothing is registered, and the licence key for syncing is verified on your own machine without a network. Royal TSX is fair on this point too: it runs with no registration, and their knowledge base states that documents and credentials are not held in any Royal Apps credential service.
Does Royal TSX have a Linux version?
No. Royal TSX is macOS only, Royal TS is Windows only, and on 20 August 2026 there was no Linux desktop client from Royal Apps at all. Linux is in the plan for Royal Connect Desktop, the announced rewrite, but that had no public beta and no release date on that day. Conchshell ships .deb, .rpm and .AppImage builds.
Can I open my .rtsz document in Conchshell?
No, and that is the main cost of moving. Conchshell reads only its own JSON bundle, so the host list is rebuilt by hand or by a short script from a Royal export. Keep the .rtsz and keep Royal TSX installed alongside; the licence you bought is perpetual, so the old document stays openable however the move goes.
What happens when Royal TSX maintenance runs out?
The application keeps working and you keep the last version released while your maintenance was active. What stops is coverage for newer releases, and resuming costs 50% of the current list price, purchasable up to six months after expiry. That is the moment most people start reading pages like this one.
How does syncing work without a cloud?
The encrypted vault is mirrored into a folder you already synchronise yourself, such as iCloud Drive, Dropbox or a git working copy, so there is no Conchshell server in the path. The limitation is the flip side of that: without such a folder only the first copy travels, by typing a code shown on the desktop screen.
Is the RDP as good as Royal TSX's?
No. Conchshell connects over CredSSP, that is NLA, with no fallback path, so a host with NLA switched off will not connect and no parity with mstsc is claimed. Royal TSX runs FreeRDP with a Remote Desktop Gateway, multi-monitor full screen and drive, printer, audio and clipboard redirection. For plain daily access to an NLA-enabled server, ours is enough.
Before you switch anything
Copy the .rtsz somewhere safe and rebuild only the hosts you actually touch every day. If the wall was the connection cap, the missing Linux client or the renewal notice, that is an evening's work, and the perpetual licence means the old application is still there if you decide you were wrong.
If the wall was a password vault integration, team sharing or a Hyper-V console, nothing here fixes it and the honest advice is to renew. The application is free on every desktop platform, and the one thing that costs money is syncing your saved connections between your own machines: $19, once.