Show HN: Shellwing – an open-source SSH client built on libghostty and GPUI

A fast, native SSH client for macOS, Windows and Linux.

Tabs, split panes, SFTP, port forwarding and an encrypted vault that syncs between your devices, in a GPU-rendered terminal built in Rust.

Features • Getting Started • Configuration • Architecture • License

Native and fast: a GPU-rendered terminal on libghostty-vt, parsing on its own thread; the display's full refresh rate under heavy output, sharp text at any HiDPI scale, and input methods (IME) with the composing text at the cursor.

SSH the way OpenSSH does it: ~/.ssh/config (aliases, ProxyJump, forwards, identity files), known_hosts checks, agent keys, key files, certificates, keyboard-interactive and two-factor codes, and agent forwarding.

Tabs and panes: split a tab to the same host, move between panes, type into every pane at once, reorder tabs by dragging; tabs follow the shell's title.

Files over SFTP: browse, upload and download (drag and drop too), rename, delete, and edit remote files in your own editor.

Port forwarding: local, remote and SOCKS (-L, -R, -D), from the command line, a saved host or the palette while connected.

Saved hosts: hosts.toml with groups, colors, favorites, tags, jump hosts, forwards and a command to run after connecting; a host list and a palette to find and open them.

Vault: passwords, SSH keys, snippets, environments, config files and notes, encrypted and unlocked through the system keychain, Windows Hello or Touch ID, or a passphrase.

Sync between devices: the vault, hosts and settings through a synced folder (iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Syncthing...), WebDAV, S3-compatible storage or a Git repository, end-to-end encrypted, with a recovery key and device pairing.

Made for work: a command palette, find in the terminal and its history, session logs, a local terminal beside the SSH tabs, customizable shortcuts, light and dark themes (gradients too), and an interface in 10 languages.

Reconnects on its own: a lost connection is retried with a back-off, and forwards come back with it.

🚀 Getting Started

Download the latest release from GitHub Releases:

The releases are not signed with an Apple Developer ID or a Windows certificate yet: the first time, macOS asks you to allow it in System Settings › Privacy & Security (Open Anyway), and Windows' SmartScreen under More info › Run anyway. The app tells you when a newer version is out, and installs it when you say so.

It needs Rust 1.95+ and Zig 0.16 on PATH (libghostty-vt is built from source):

make build # a release build for this computer, into dist/ make package # and the packages a release ships (docs/releasing.md) cargo build --release # or by hand

Then:

shellwing # the window with the host list shellwing [user@]host[:port] # and a tab connected to the host shellwing --local # and a tab with a shell on this computer

host can be a name from hosts.toml or an alias from ~/.ssh/config. Per-platform setup (toolchains, Linux libraries, testing on Windows in a VM) is in docs/platforms.md.

Settings, hosts and themes are TOML files in the config directory (~/.config/shellwing on Linux) and apply while the app runs; Settings in the app edits the same files. Everything is described in docs/configuration.md, and the design notes are in docs/design.

The app is a GPUI window over a core with no UI, which also builds for iOS and Android.

shellwing is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 3 or (at your option) any later version. See LICENSE. Copyright (C) 2026 HivePaaS.

The name and logo are not covered by the GPL: see TRADEMARKS.md. Contributions are welcome under the terms in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Code adapted from other projects keeps its license and notice: crates/app/src/input.rs is adapted from GPUI's examples/input.rs (Apache-2.0, Zed Industries), crates/note-editor from zorite-editor (MIT; see crates/note-editor/LICENSE), and most built-in terminal themes come from iTerm2-Color-Schemes (MIT; see crates/config/themes/LICENSE-iTerm2-Color-Schemes). The libraries shellwing builds on are all under licenses that allow this (MIT, Apache-2.0, BSD, ISC, Zlib, MPL-2.0 and similar).