TermCraft is a free and open-source terminal and session manager for people who live on remote machines. It handles SSH, Telnet, serial consoles, SFTP/SCP transfers, VNC and RDP, organized in one place, with jump hosts, port forwarding, button bars and scripting.

Download

Get the latest version from Releases:

Platform	File
macOS (Apple silicon & Intel)	.dmg (or .zip)
Windows 10/11 (x64)	Setup .exe installer, or the portable .exe
Linux (x64)	.AppImage, .deb (Debian/Ubuntu) or .rpm (Fedora/RHEL)

First launch on macOS: TermCraft isn't notarized with Apple yet, so macOS will say it can't verify the developer. Open it once from System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway. On Windows, SmartScreen may ask for confirmation (More info → Run anyway).

Highlights

• Every protocol in one place: SSH2, Telnet, Rlogin, serial, raw TCP, local shells, plus a built-in VNC viewer and RDP launching.
• Session Manager: folders, filter, drag and drop, import from ~/.ssh/config, and connecting a whole folder at once.
• Reach anything: jump hosts, local/remote/SOCKS port forwarding, and SSH tunnels for VNC and RDP.
• Work faster: button bars (one set per device type), a command window that types into every tab, keyword highlighting and JavaScript automation.
• Move files: a two-pane SFTP browser and an SCP transfer manager, both of which work through jump hosts.
• Your layout: tabs, stacked, side by side or grid. Collapse everything for a full-screen terminal.
• Appearance: pick a theme family (Catppuccin, Nord, Solarized, Dracula, Gruvbox, Tokyo Night, One, Rosé Pine, Everforest, Kanagawa, GitHub, Tomorrow…) and Light, Dark or Auto, like macOS: Auto uses the family's light variant by day and its dark variant at night. The window and terminals share one palette, with a live preview; terminals can use a different palette if you want. The JetBrains Mono font is built in, with adjustable size, line spacing, margins and cursor.
• Secure by default: host-key verification, logins encrypted in your OS keychain, and a sandboxed UI. See SECURITY.md.

SCP transfers through a jump host	Session options: jump host, keep-alive, forwarding
Button bars for every kind of device	Appearance: 13 theme families, Light / Dark / Auto, live preview

Features

Area	What's included
Protocols	SSH2, Telnet (with option negotiation: NAWS, TTYPE, ECHO, SGA, BINARY), Rlogin, Serial (COM/tty with baud, data bits, parity, stop bits, flow control), Raw TCP, Local Shell (PTY), VNC (built in), RDP (via the system client)
SSH2 auth	Public key (with passphrase prompt), keyboard-interactive (MFA), password with retry, SSH agent (ssh-agent, Pageant, Windows OpenSSH agent). You choose the method order.
SSH2 extras	Host key verification with a known-hosts store and a warning when a key changes, jump host / firewall chaining, local, remote and dynamic (SOCKS4/4a/5) port forwarding, X11 forwarding, agent forwarding, compression, keep-alive, protocol trace, cipher shown in the status bar
Session Manager	Folder tree, filter, drag and drop, connect a whole folder, duplicate, rename, per-session options, tab colors per session or folder (e.g. red for production), import from ~/.ssh/config (including ProxyJump), JSON import and export
Shared credentials	One login (username + password and/or key) used by many sessions, such as a TACACS/RADIUS or domain account. Change the password once and every device uses it — or log in once with the new password and choose "Save login". Encrypted with the OS keychain.
Bulk import	Import hundreds of devices from a CSV (inventory/IPAM export or spreadsheet) or a plain host list. Columns are matched by header: name, host/IP, port, protocol, username, folder/site (HQ/Core creates subfolders), credential, jump host, notes. Duplicates are skipped.
Run commands on many sessions	Pick sessions or a whole folder, enter commands, and TermCraft runs them in the background over SSH2, Telnet, Rlogin or Serial — 1 to 20 at a time — and saves each device's output to its own file. Telnet/serial logins are answered automatically and --More-- pagers are handled for every major vendor, so no terminal length 0 is needed. Good for audits, config backups and "show version" across a site.
Auto-login	Telnet, Rlogin and serial consoles answer Username: / Password: prompts with the session's login or its credential (once each, only right after connecting).
Quick Connect	Dialog (⌘Q / Ctrl+Shift+Q) plus an "Enter host" box in the toolbar that accepts user@host:port and telnet://host
Tabs & tiling	Tabs, tile vertically, tile horizontally, grid. Clone session, reconnect (Enter on a dead tab), auto-reconnect, activity indicators, drag to reorder, rename
Inline images	The Kitty graphics protocol (PNG, RGB/RGBA, zlib, chunked transfers, placement, delete and the support query that tools like chafa, timg, yazi and ranger use), plus Sixel and iTerm2 inline images. Only images sent inline are shown: a remote host can never make TermCraft read local files.
Terminal	xterm-256color/VT100/VT220/ANSI/Linux, truecolor, Unicode 11, 8 color schemes, per-session fonts and cursor, scrollback, find (regex, case), clickable links (Ctrl/⌘+click), character encodings
Save output	Save a tab's whole scrollback to a text file (File → Save Output As…).
Clipboard	Copy on select, right-click paste, confirm before a multi-line paste, configurable delay between pasted lines, paste as a single line, Send ASCII File
Button bars	Multiple named bars (e.g. Linux, Network Devices, Tools) with a dropdown to switch between them. Button functions are Send String, Send String to All Tabs, Run Script, Connect Session, Menu Function and Launch Application. Strings support \r \n \t \e \xHH escapes, \p (pause 1 s) and ${prompt:Label} (ask for a value when clicked). Right-click to add, edit, duplicate, delete, move or copy buttons to another bar, or drag to reorder. Buttons can have colors and tooltips. A session can always show a particular bar. Bars can be imported and exported as JSON.
Command Buffer	Prepare commands before they reach the device (View → Command Buffer, ⌘E / Ctrl+Shift+E). Command mode is a strip below the terminal: type, press Enter to send, ↑/↓ for history. Script mode is an editor beside the terminal, half and half, in the style of WinFIOL: ⌘/Ctrl+Enter sends the line at the cursor and moves to the next, or send a selection or the whole script, pausing between lines until the device's prompt returns (or a fixed delay), with the line being sent highlighted and a Stop button. Send to the current, visible or all tabs; open and save command files; the buffer is kept between sessions.
Productivity	Broadcast keystrokes to all tabs, keyboard mapping, keyword highlighting with ready-made Network devices (interface down, err-disabled, syslog severities, IPs, MACs, interface names) and Linux servers rule sets
Automation	Logon actions (expect/send), logon scripts, anti-idle, JavaScript scripting with a tc automation API
Logging	Per-session logs with filename tokens (%S %H %P %U %Y %M %D %h %m %s), timestamps on each line, append or overwrite, plain-text or raw
SFTP	Dual-pane local and remote file manager with upload and download, recursive folders, drag and drop from your OS, rename, delete, mkdir, chmod and a transfer queue with progress
SCP Transfer Manager	A queue of SCP uploads and downloads (files, folders, wildcards) with progress, speed, time left, cancel and retry, parallel transfers, and drag-and-drop from Finder or Explorer. It connects directly, or through a jump host: the session's own, any saved session, or a one-off user@host:port. It speaks the SCP protocol itself, so it works with servers and network devices that have no SFTP. File names sent by the server are validated, which blocks path traversal from a malicious server (CVE-2019-6111 style).
TFTP server	Built-in TFTP server (Transfer → TFTP Server) for IOS/firmware images and config backups, with the blksize/tsize/timeout options for fast transfers of large images. It serves one folder only, uploads are off unless enabled, existing files are never replaced unless allowed, and it shows the exact copy tftp://… command to type on the device.
ZMODEM / YMODEM / XMODEM	Send and receive files over any terminal tab (serial console, SSH, Telnet). ZMODEM starts by itself: when the device runs rz, TermCraft asks for the files; when it runs sz, files download to your Downloads folder. Several files are sent as a series in the order you choose (remembered per session). YMODEM batch and XMODEM/XMODEM-1K cover bootloaders — U-Boot loady/loadx, ROMMON xmodem -c flash:…. Tested against the standard lrzsz (rz/sz) tools, including recovery from line errors.
SSH keys	Create Ed25519, RSA or ECDSA keys in ~/.ssh (with a passphrase), copy public keys, and install a key on a server like ssh-copy-id (right-click a session → Install SSH Key…).
VNC	A built-in viewer (noVNC) in its own tab. It connects directly or through an SSH tunnel to a saved SSH session. It supports VNC password, Apple Remote Desktop (macOS Screen Sharing), VeNCrypt and RSA-AES authentication; fit-to-window, remote resize or actual size; view-only mode; clipboard sync; and Ctrl+Alt+Del. Logins can be saved like SSH logins.
RDP	Saved RDP sessions (domain, size or full screen, multi-monitor, admin console) that TermCraft launches with the system's own client: Windows App on macOS, Remote Desktop Connection on Windows, FreeRDP or Remmina on Linux. You can also set a custom command. It can open an SSH tunnel first and point the client at it. On Linux, a saved password goes to FreeRDP on stdin, never on the command line.
Security	Saved passwords and passphrases are encrypted through the OS keychain (Electron safeStorage: Keychain, DPAPI, libsecret). Secrets never reach the UI process.

Getting started

npm install          # also rebuilds node-pty / serialport for Electron
npm start

npm 11+ blocks dependency install scripts by default. The approvals are in package.json under allowScripts. If native modules fail to load, run npm run rebuild.

Building installers

npm run dist:mac     # .dmg + .zip
npm run dist:win     # NSIS installer + portable .exe
npm run dist:linux   # AppImage, .deb, .rpm

Native modules (node-pty, serialport) have to be compiled on the target OS. Build each platform on that platform, or push a v* tag and let .github/workflows/build.yml build all three. Linux builds need libudev-dev. macOS distribution builds need a signing identity.

Scripting

Scripts are plain JavaScript and support top-level await. The automation object is tc (crt is also accepted, for compatibility with scripts written for other terminal emulators). Run one with Script → Run…, attach it to a button, map it to a key, or set it as a session's logon script. Examples are in examples/scripts/.

tc.Screen.Send("show version\r");
await tc.Screen.WaitForString("#", 10);                 // true or false on timeout
const i = await tc.Screen.WaitForStrings(["$", "#"], 5); // 1-based index, 0 on timeout
const out = await tc.Screen.ReadString("#", 10);         // text before the match
const screen = await tc.Screen.Get();                    // visible screen text
const host = await tc.Dialog.Prompt("Host?");
const tab = await tc.Session.Connect("Core Router");     // saved name or user@host:port
tab.Session.Log(true);
console.log("printed into the terminal");

Scripts run with your own privileges and can use fs, path, os, child_process, net and crypto. Only run scripts you trust.

Tests

npm test           # unit, integration and security tests
npm run test:e2e   # end-to-end suites in the real app
npm run test:all   # both, plus npm audit

The suite includes unit tests (Telnet parser, SOCKS parser, store, highlighting, escapes) and integration tests that run the SSH client against an in-process ssh2 server: authentication, host-key storage, shell I/O, local and SOCKS forwarding, SFTP, logon actions, WaitFor and timestamped logging.

For a UI smoke test with screenshots:

TERMCRAFT_SMOKE=test/smoke/ui-smoke.js TERMCRAFT_SHOTS=/tmp/shots npx electron . --user-data-dir=/tmp/termcraft-smoke

Roadmap (not yet implemented)

• SSH1, Kerberos/GSSAPI auth, PKCS#11 and smart cards, X.509 certificates
• X/Y/Zmodem and Kermit file transfer (SFTP and SCP cover most uses)
• VBScript, Python or Perl scripting (JavaScript only) and a script recorder
• A text-mode sftp> tab (TermCraft has a GUI file manager instead)
• Printing, and multiple top-level windows (TermCraft uses one window with tabs and tiling)
• Rlogin from a privileged source port (many rlogind servers require one)
• A built-in RDP renderer. No embeddable RDP client is GPLv2-compatible (FreeRDP is Apache-2.0), so RDP uses the system client.
• Sending in non-Latin multibyte encodings (receiving works for Shift-JIS, GBK, Big5 and others; sending supports UTF-8 and the Latin-1 family)

Design

The mark: the prompt >_ drawn as a connection. The top arm (mustard) is you and the bottom arm (teal) is the server. They meet at a vermilion joint, the jump host. The cream _ cursor means connected and ready. It uses one line weight, round ends and flat warm inks on charcoal, in a mid-century modernist style.

Layout

src/main/            Electron main process
  main.js            window, IPC wiring, main↔renderer requests
  store.js           sessions, settings and known hosts (JSON in userData, secrets encrypted)
  connection-manager.js  per-tab connections, decoding, logging, logon actions, waiters
  scripting.js       tc.* scripting engine
  sftp-service.js    SFTP and local filesystem operations
  protocols/         ssh.js, simple.js (telnet/rlogin/raw/serial/local), telnet-parser.js, socks.js
src/renderer/        UI (vanilla ES modules, xterm.js)
examples/scripts/    sample scripts
test/                node:test suites + UI smoke script

License

TermCraft is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. See LICENSE for the full text.

TermCraft is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Every source file carries an SPDX tag: SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later. Bundled third-party packages are under GPL-compatible licenses (MIT, BSD, Unlicense, and MPL-2.0 for noVNC, whose secondary-license clause allows combination with the GPL), listed with their full texts in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md. Regenerate that file with npm run notices after changing dependencies.

The artwork in build/, docs/ and src/renderer/assets/ is generated by scripts/icon-art.js and is covered by the same license. Rebuild it with npm run icons.

Security

See SECURITY.md for the security model and how to report vulnerabilities. npm run test:all runs the unit, integration and security regression tests, the end-to-end suites (including in-app attack tests) and a dependency audit.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. TermCraft uses the Developer Certificate of Origin, as the Linux kernel does: sign off each commit with git commit -s. See CONTRIBUTING.md.