R-Shell — Lightweight SSH Client for macOS, Windows & Linux

A modern SSH/SFTP/FTP/RDP/VNC client built with Rust and Tauri 2. ~98% less memory than Java-based alternatives (~34 MB vs ~1.7 GB). Installer under 10 MB.

Low memory · Native speed · Multi-protocol · Remote desktop · Split terminals · SFTP file manager · GPU monitoring · Log viewer · Directory sync

Features · Installation · Screenshots · Contributing

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📸 Screenshots

R-Shell — split terminals, file manager, and system monitor in a single window

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🚀 Why R-Shell?

Most SSH clients (FinalShell, MobaXterm, Xshell) run on Java or Electron — burning memory even at idle. R-Shell uses Rust + Tauri 2 for native performance at a fraction of the cost.

Memory Comparison

Measured on macOS (Apple Silicon, 16 GB RAM) using footprint:

App	Technology	Memory	Relative
R-Shell	Rust + Tauri 2	~34 MB	1×
FinalShell	Java	~1.7 GB	~50×

Installer Size

Platform	R-Shell	FinalShell	Savings
Windows	3.99 MB	64 MB	16× smaller
macOS	8.13 MB	102 MB	12× smaller

No bundled JVM or Chromium — Tauri uses the OS native webview.

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🎯 About

R-Shell combines an interactive terminal, dual-panel file manager, remote desktop viewer (RDP/VNC), real-time system/GPU monitoring, and log viewing in a single VS Code-like workspace. Built with Rust for native performance and minimal resource usage.

• Native Performance — Tauri 2 + Rust backend, not Electron or Java
• Cross-Platform — macOS, Windows, and Linux
• Multilingual UI — English and Simplified Chinese, with more languages welcome

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✨ Features

🔌 Multi-Protocol Connections

Protocol	Authentication	Description
SSH	Password, Public Key	Full interactive PTY terminal
SFTP	Password, Public Key	Standalone file transfer sessions
FTP	Password, Anonymous	Plain FTP file transfers
FTPS	Password, Anonymous	FTP over TLS
RDP	Password	Remote Desktop Protocol
VNC	Password	Virtual Network Computing

• Connection Manager — Tree-view sidebar with folders, favorites, tags, and drag-and-drop reordering
• SSH Tunnel (Jump Host) — Route connections through a bastion or jump server
• Connection Profiles — Save, import/export (JSON), duplicate, and edit connections
• Session Restore — Automatically reconnects your workspace on launch
• Quick Connect — Toolbar dropdown with recent connections
• Auto Reconnect — Exponential backoff reconnection (up to 5 attempts)

💻 Interactive PTY Terminal

• Full terminal emulation — xterm.js 6 with support for vim, htop, top, less, and all interactive programs
• WebSocket streaming — Low-latency bidirectional I/O with bounded flow control
• WebGL renderer — Hardware-accelerated rendering with automatic canvas fallback and recovery
• Terminal search — Regex and case-sensitive search with F3 navigation
• Context menu — Copy, paste, select all, clear, save to file, reconnect
• IME / CJK input — Full support for Chinese, Japanese, Korean input methods
• Session detach — Xshell-style Ctrl+A, D parks a session in the background with keep-alive; reattach anytime
• Working-directory follow — Keep the remote file browser aligned with the active Bash terminal

🪟 Split Panes & Tab Groups

• Split in 4 directions — Up, Down, Left, Right
• Recursive grid layout — Unlimited nested splits with resizable panels
• Tab management — Add, close, close all, duplicate, reorder (drag-and-drop), move between groups
• Drop zone overlay — Drag tabs onto 5 drop zones (up/down/left/right/center)
• Keyboard shortcuts — Ctrl+\ split, Ctrl+1-9 focus group, Ctrl+Tab cycle tabs

📁 Dual-Panel File Manager (FileZilla-style)

• Local + Remote panels — Side-by-side browsing with upload/download buttons
• Multi-protocol — Works over SSH, SFTP, FTP, and FTPS
• File operations — Create, rename, delete, copy files and directories
• Built-in code editor — Open files in an embedded editor with syntax highlighting for common languages
• Breadcrumb navigation — Editable address bar with click-to-navigate
• Sort & filter — By name, size, date, permissions, owner (ascending/descending)
• Multi-select — Select multiple files for batch operations and batch delete
• Transfer queue — Queued transfers with progress, speed, ETA, cancel, and retry
• Recursive directory transfer — Upload/download entire directory trees

🔄 Directory Synchronization

• 4-step sync wizard — Configure → Compare → Review → Sync
• Sync directions — Local-to-Remote or Remote-to-Local
• Comparison criteria — Size, modified time, or both
• Diff preview — Per-item checkboxes with upload/download/delete/skip actions
• Exclude patterns — Skip .git, node_modules, .DS_Store, etc.

📊 System Monitoring

• CPU — Real-time usage with color-coded thresholds
• Memory & Swap — Total, used, free with percentage bars
• Disk — Per-mount filesystem usage with progress bars
• Uptime & Load Average — At a glance
• Process Manager — List processes sorted by CPU/MEM, kill with confirmation
• Real-time charts — CPU history and memory area charts (Recharts)

🎮 GPU Monitoring

• NVIDIA (nvidia-smi) — Utilization, memory, temperature, power, fan speed, encoder/decoder
• AMD — GPU stats support
• Multi-GPU — GPU selector with individual or "all" view
• History charts — Utilization, memory, temperature over time
• Temperature thresholds — Green < 60°C, yellow < 75°C, orange < 85°C, red ≥ 85°C

🌐 Network Monitoring

• Bandwidth — Per-interface rx/tx bytes per second
• Latency — Real-time network latency measurements
• Active connections — Protocol, local/remote address, state, PID
• Usage charts — Download/upload history

📋 Log Monitoring

• Multi-source — Log files, journalctl services, Docker containers, custom paths
• Auto-discovery — Finds available log sources on the remote host
• Level filtering — ERROR, WARN, INFO, DEBUG, TRACE filter chips
• Regex search — With match highlighting
• Live tail — Configurable refresh interval (1s – 30s)
• Rich formatting — Line numbers, timestamps, and level badges parsed from common log formats
• Download — Save log content locally

🎨 Appearance & Customization

• 10 terminal color themes — VS Code Dark, Monokai, Solarized Dark/Light, Dracula, One Dark, Nord, Gruvbox Dark, Tokyo Night, Matrix
• Dark / Light / Auto — Application theme follows system preference
• 7 font families — Menlo, JetBrains Mono, Fira Code, Source Code Pro, Consolas, Monaco, Courier New
• Configurable — Font size, line height, letter spacing, cursor style (block/underline/bar), scrollback (1K–100K lines)
• Background images — Custom image with opacity, blur, and position controls
• Terminal transparency — Configurable opacity
• Config backup — Export and import your full configuration

⌨️ Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Ctrl+B	Toggle Connection Manager
Ctrl+J	Toggle File Browser
Ctrl+M	Toggle Monitor Panel
Ctrl+Z	Toggle Zen Mode
Ctrl+\	Split terminal right
Ctrl+Shift+\	Split terminal down
Ctrl+1 – Ctrl+9	Focus terminal group
Ctrl+W	Close active tab
Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab	Next / previous tab
Ctrl+A, D	Detach session to background (Xshell-style)
Cmd/Ctrl+V	Paste into terminal
Cmd/Ctrl+F	Search in terminal
F3 / Shift+F3	Find next / previous

Layout shortcuts are registered at the OS level but ignored while terminal input is focused, so terminal-native bindings (e.g. tmux Ctrl+B) still reach the shell.

🔧 Additional Features

• Quick Commands — Right-sidebar panel for saving and running reusable command snippets
• VS Code-like layout — Resizable left/right sidebars + bottom panel with 5 layout presets (Default, Minimal, Focus, Full Stack, Zen) and layout persistence
• Remote Desktop — Built-in RDP and VNC viewer with clipboard sync and dynamic resizing
• Launch at login — Start R-Shell automatically when you sign in
• Auto-update — Check for updates with download progress and install-and-relaunch
• Menu bar — File, Edit, Tools, Connection menus with full keyboard shortcuts
• Status bar — Active connection name, protocol badge, connection status indicator

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📦 Installation

🍺 Homebrew (macOS — Recommended)

brew tap GOODBOY008/tap
brew install --cask r-shell

Update:

brew upgrade --cask r-shell

📥 Download Releases

Download from the Releases page:

Platform	File
macOS (Apple Silicon)	r-shell_x.x.x_aarch64.dmg
macOS (Intel)	r-shell_x.x.x_x64.dmg
Windows	r-shell_x.x.x_x64-setup.exe
Linux	r-shell_x.x.x_amd64.AppImage / .deb

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🛠 Tech Stack

Backend

• Tauri 2 — Native desktop framework using the OS webview (no bundled Chromium)
• Rust — Zero-cost abstractions, no GC, no JVM — ~34 MB vs ~1.7 GB
• russh / russh-sftp — Pure Rust SSH & SFTP implementation
• suppaftp — FTP/FTPS client
• tokio — Async runtime with minimal overhead
• tokio-tungstenite — WebSocket server for PTY streaming
• sysinfo — System stats collection

Frontend

• React 19 + TypeScript — Type-safe modern React
• Tailwind CSS — Utility-first styling
• Radix UI / shadcn/ui — 45+ accessible component primitives
• xterm.js 6 — Terminal emulation with WebGL, search, web-links, fit, and overlay addons
• CodeMirror 6 — Embedded code editor with syntax highlighting
• Recharts — Data visualization for monitoring
• i18next — Internationalization (English, Simplified Chinese)
• Lucide Icons — Icon set

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🤝 Contributing

We welcome contributions! This project is an experiment in AI-assisted development.

Quick Links:

• Contributing Guidelines
• Code of Conduct

How to Contribute

1. Fork the repo
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit (git commit -m 'feat: add amazing feature')
4. Push (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

Areas We Need Help

• 🐛 Bug fixes and issue reports
• 📝 Documentation improvements
• ✨ Feature enhancements
• 🧪 Test coverage
• 🌐 Internationalization (i18n)
• 🎨 UI/UX improvements

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📄 License

MIT — see LICENSE.

💬 Community

• Issues
• Discussions
• Pull Requests

🙏 Acknowledgments

• shadcn/ui — UI components
• Figma Make — Design generation
• Lucide — Icons
• GitHub Copilot — AI pair programming

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Made with ❤️ and 🤖 AI

If you like this project, please give it a ⭐!