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binaricat/Netcatty: SSH workspace, SFTP, and terminals in one

binaricat/Netcatty: SSH workspace, SFTP, and terminals in one

15 hours ago

Netcatty

Netcatty

🔥 AI-Powered SSH Client, SFTP Browser & Terminal Manager 🚀
netcatty.app

binaricat/Netcatty | Trendshift

A beautiful, feature-rich SSH workspace built with Electron, React, and xterm.js.
🔥 Built-in AI Agent · Split terminals · Vault views · SFTP workflows · Custom themes — all in one.

GitHub Release   Platform   License

Download Latest Release

Sponsor on GitHub   Support on Ko-fi

English · 简体中文 · 繁體中文 · 日本語


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🔥 Catty Agent — Your IT Ops AI Partner

🚀 Boost your IT ops daily work with AI power. Catty Agent is the built-in AI assistant that understands your servers, executes commands, and handles complex multi-host operations — all through natural conversation.

🔥 What can Catty Agent do?

  • 🚀 Natural language server management — just tell it what you need, no more memorizing commands
  • 🔥 Real-time server diagnostics — check status, inspect logs, monitor resources through conversation
  • 🚀 Multi-host orchestration — coordinate tasks across multiple servers simultaneously
  • 🔥 Intelligent context awareness — understands your server environment and provides tailored responses
  • 🚀 One-click complex operations — set up clusters, deploy services, and more with simple instructions

🎬 AI in Action

🔥 Single Host — Intelligent Server Diagnostics

Ask Catty Agent to check a server's health, and it runs the right commands, analyzes the output, and gives you a clear summary — all in seconds.

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🚀 Multi-Host — Docker Swarm Cluster Setup

Watch Catty Agent orchestrate a Docker Swarm cluster across two servers in one conversation. It handles the init, token exchange, and node joining — you just tell it what you want.

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Contents

- Main Window - Vault Views - Split Terminals - Open a local terminal from the command line

What is Netcatty

Netcatty is a modern SSH client and terminal manager for macOS, Windows, and Linux, designed for developers, sysadmins, and DevOps engineers who need to manage multiple remote servers efficiently.

  • Netcatty is an alternative to PuTTY, Termius, SecureCRT, and macOS Terminal.app for SSH connections
  • Netcatty is a powerful SFTP client with dual-pane file browser
  • Netcatty is a terminal workspace with split panes, tabs, and session management
  • Netcatty supports SSH, local terminal, Telnet, Mosh, and Serial connections (when available)
  • Netcatty is not a shell replacement — it connects to shells via SSH/Telnet/Mosh or local/serial sessions

Why Netcatty

If you regularly work with a fleet of servers, Netcatty is built for speed and flow:

  • Workspace-first — split panes + tabs + session restore for “always-on” workflows
  • Vault organization — grid/list/tree views with fast search and drag-friendly workflows
  • Serious SFTP — built-in editor + drag & drop + smooth file operations

Features

🗂️ Vault

  • Multiple views — grid / list / tree
  • Fast search — locate hosts and groups quickly

🖥️ Terminal Workspaces

  • Split panes — horizontal and vertical splits for multi-tasking
  • Session management — run multiple connections side-by-side
  • Save current screen — right-click a terminal to save the visible final text, without replaying keystrokes or overwritten output; scroll first to save an earlier screen.
  • Inline images — render Kitty graphics, SIXEL and iTerm inline images from remote programs
  • Archive shortcuts — on Linux sessions, Ctrl/Cmd+click a printed .tar, .tar.gz/.tgz, .tar.bz2/.tbz2, .tar.xz or .zip name to fill an extraction command with the archive's absolute path into the prompt (kept next to any typed text); press Enter to run it. Names relative to the current directory need directory tracking (OSC 7, see the toolbar's Configure directory tracking); absolute paths always work. Windows, WSL, and macOS sessions are excluded.

📁 SFTP + Built-in Editor

  • File workflows — drag & drop uploads/downloads
  • Edit in place — built-in editor for quick changes

🎨 Personalization

  • Custom themes — tune the app appearance to your taste
  • Keyword highlighting — customize highlight rules for terminal output

Screenshots

Main Window

The main window is designed for long-running SSH workflows: quick access to sessions, navigation, and core tools in one place.

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Vault Views

Organize and navigate your hosts using the view that best fits the moment: grid for overview, list for scanning, tree for structure.

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Monitoring View

Inspect CPU, memory, disk, network, and latency readings, with GPU details where available. Choose visible columns, resize them, select refresh intervals down to 1 second, and open a terminal directly from a monitored host.

Disk I/O shows aggregate read/write throughput for Linux hardware-backed block devices, without counting partitions or stacked virtual devices twice. Rates use two consecutive samples; -- means unavailable or warming up, not zero activity. Disk I/O is currently unavailable on macOS; existing macOS monitoring is unchanged. The terminal system overview uses the same shared measurements.

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Split Terminals

Split panes help you monitor multiple servers/services at the same time (deploy + logs + metrics) without juggling windows.

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Supported Distros

Netcatty automatically detects and displays OS icons for connected hosts:

Ubuntu Debian CentOS Fedora Arch Linux Alpine Amazon Linux Red Hat Rocky Linux openSUSE Oracle Linux Kali Linux AlmaLinux

Getting Started

Download

Download the latest release for your platform from GitHub Releases.

| OS | Support | | :--- | :--- | | macOS | Universal (x64 / arm64) | | Windows | x64 / arm64 | | Linux | x64 / arm64 |

Or browse all releases at GitHub Releases.

Code signing and privacy

Netcatty is applying to the SignPath Foundation open-source program. Once approved, covered Windows release artifacts will use Free code signing provided by SignPath.io, certificate by SignPath Foundation. See the code signing policy and privacy policy. Windows releases may remain unsigned until the application and integration are complete.

Windows portable data: Exit Netcatty, then create a folder named data beside Netcatty.exe (zip build) or beside the portable launcher. Netcatty will store its profile there on the next launch. Saved passwords and private keys remain protected by the Windows user account that created them, so they must be re-entered after moving the folder to another computer or Windows account.
Open folders in Netcatty on Windows: The installed version adds Open in Netcatty to Explorer's folder context menu and folder-background context menu. It opens a local terminal in that folder. On Windows 11, choose Show more options first. Turn the menu off or on in Settings → System → Windows Explorer. ZIP and portable versions do not add this menu by default.
macOS Users: Current releases are expected to be code-signed and notarized. If Gatekeeper still warns, make sure you downloaded the latest official build from GitHub Releases.

Open a local terminal from the command line

--open-terminal-path

opens a local terminal in that folder. --open-terminal-shell selects the shell: a discovered id such as pwsh, cmd, or wsl-ubuntu, or a path to a shell executable. Either flag is enough. A shell alone opens a local tab in the default directory. A path alone uses the configured local shell. If Netcatty is already running, the tab opens in that window.

Windows needs an extra -- so Electron forwards the flags:

Netcatty.exe -- --open-terminal-shell=pwsh --open-terminal-path="D:\\proj"

On macOS, start a new instance with open, or run the binary directly:

open -n -a Netcatty --args --open-terminal-shell=zsh --open-terminal-path="$HOME/proj"
/Applications/Netcatty.app/Contents/MacOS/Netcatty --open-terminal-shell=zsh --open-terminal-path="$HOME/proj"

Scoop (Windows x64, community-maintained)

With Scoop installed, you can install Netcatty from the community-maintained lemon bucket, which downloads the installer from Netcatty's official GitHub Releases:

scoop bucket add lemon https://github.com/hoilc/scoop-lemon
scoop install lemon/netcatty

Exit Netcatty before updating or uninstalling:

scoop update
scoop update netcatty

To uninstall:

scoop uninstall netcatty

This is a third-party package, not an official Netcatty bucket, and updates may lag behind GitHub Releases. It currently supports x64 only. Settings remain in %APPDATA%\netcatty across updates and normal uninstalls; scoop uninstall netcatty --purge also deletes those settings. Use Scoop to manage updates for this installation.

Nix / NixOS

Netcatty provides a flake that wraps the official Linux AppImage release for Nix and NixOS users:

nix run github:binaricat/Netcatty

For declarative installs, add the Netcatty flake as an input and use inputs.netcatty.packages.${pkgs.system}.default in your NixOS or Home Manager package list.

Prerequisites

  • Node.js 18+ and npm
  • macOS, Windows 10+, or Linux

Development

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/binaricat/Netcatty.git
cd Netcatty

Install dependencies

npm install

Start development mode (Vite + Electron)

npm run dev

Build & Package

# Build for production
npm run build

Package for current platform

npm run pack

Package for specific platforms

npm run pack:mac # macOS (DMG + ZIP) npm run pack:win # Windows (NSIS installer) npm run pack:linux # Linux (AppImage + DEB + RPM)

Tech Stack

| Category | Technology | |----------|------------| | Framework | Electron 40 | | Frontend | React 19, TypeScript | | Build Tool | Vite 7 | | Terminal | xterm.js 5 | | Styling | Tailwind CSS 4 | | SSH/SFTP | ssh2, ssh2-sftp-client | | PTY | node-pty | | Icons | Lucide React |


Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

  1. Fork the repository
  2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
  3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some amazing feature')
  4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
  5. Open a Pull Request
See AGENTS.md for architecture overview and coding conventions.

Contributors

Thanks to all the people who contribute!


License

This project is licensed under the GPL-3.0 License - see the LICENSE file for details.


Star History

Star History Chart


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