Oryxis

A modern SSH client built entirely in Rust. Fast, encrypted, native.

English | 简体中文

What is Oryxis?

Oryxis is an open-source alternative to Termius: a desktop SSH client with a modern UI, an encrypted local vault for credentials, and no cloud account anywhere in the loop. No Electron, no webview, no vendor servers. Just a single native binary.

Most SSH clients make you pick two out of three: powerful but dated (PuTTY), pretty but Electron-heavy (Termius, Tabby), or minimal and terminal-only (OpenSSH). Oryxis aims at all three: beautiful, fast, and native.

	Oryxis	Termius	PuTTY	Tabby
UI stack	Native Rust (iced + wgpu)	Electron	Native	Electron
License	AGPL-3.0, open source	Proprietary	MIT	MIT
Credential storage	Local encrypted vault	Vendor cloud account	None	Local config files
Device sync	P2P, E2E encrypted, optionally self-hosted relay	Vendor cloud (subscription)	None	Via Tabby Web
SFTP GUI	Dual-pane, built in	Paid plan	CLI only	Basic panel
Price	Free	Free tier + subscription	Free	Free

Install

Windows

winget install WilsonGlasser.Oryxis

Arch Linux (AUR)

yay -S oryxis-bin

Direct downloads from the latest release:

Platform	Architecture	Download
Linux	x86_64	.tar.gz · .deb · .AppImage
Linux	ARM64	.tar.gz · .deb · .AppImage
macOS	Apple Silicon	.dmg · .tar.gz
Windows	x86_64	setup.exe · user-setup.exe · .zip portable
Windows	ARM64	setup.exe · user-setup.exe · .zip portable

Which Windows installer? (system vs per-user, VSCode-style)

• System (oryxis-setup-*.exe): installs to Program Files, registers under HKLM, requires UAC. Use this for shared machines or when all Windows users should share the install. This is the build winget install targets.
• Per-user (oryxis-user-setup-*.exe): installs to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Oryxis, registers under HKCU, no admin rights. Use this on locked-down machines or when you don't want UAC prompts on every update.

Both register oryxis and oryxis-mcp on PATH so they resolve from any shell. The auto-updater detects the install scope and downloads the matching installer. Windows binaries are Authenticode-signed (see Code signing policy).

Highlights

• Native and fast. Pure Rust, GPU-accelerated iced UI, single binary. No Electron, no webview.
• Encrypted local vault. Argon2id + ChaCha20-Poly1305 per field, optional master password, biometric unlock (Windows Hello / Touch ID / Linux keyring), idle auto-lock, and TOTP autofill for 2FA hosts.
• The full SSH pipeline. Auto-auth, multi-hop jump chains, SOCKS / HTTP / command proxies, agent forwarding, standalone -L/-R/-D port forwarding, and ~/.ssh/config import.
• More than SSH. Telnet and serial consoles for the gear that never learned SSH, ZMODEM transfers, local shells, and one-click RDP/VNC through an SSH tunnel.
• A real terminal. alacritty-based emulator, split panes, session groups, per-host themes, bundled Nerd Fonts, smart tabs that flag long-running commands, and per-host command history.
• Files everywhere. Dual-pane SFTP with drag-and-drop, edit-in-place and server-to-server copy; every SSH tab also carries a Files sidebar that follows your shell's working directory.
• Session recording. Encrypted at rest; exports to asciinema .cast (theme embedded) or plain transcript, output-only by design.
• Cloud accounts. AWS, Google Cloud, Azure and Kubernetes discovery and connect (EC2, SSM, ECS Exec, GKE, AKS, kubectl), shipped as signed on-demand plugins.
• AI where you work. A per-tab assistant (bring your own key: Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, or compatible) with layered auto-exec safety, plus an MCP server that exposes your hosts to AI clients like Claude Code.
• P2P sync, no cloud. End-to-end encrypted (X25519 + XChaCha20-Poly1305) over QUIC; mDNS on the LAN, optional self-hosted signaling/relay across networks. No account, no vendor server.
• Keyboard-first. user@host quick connect (Ctrl+K), MRU tab switching, full keyboard navigation down to the last toggle, every hotkey rebindable.
• Private by design. No telemetry, Privacy Mode masking, a paste guard that reads what you're pasting, and 23 languages with full RTL support.

The complete inventory lives in the feature tour.

Screenshots

Click any thumbnail for the full-size image.

Hosts dashboard: card grid, groups, distro auto-detection	Dual-pane SFTP: drag-and-drop, multi-select, edit-in-place
Streaming AI sidebar with per-block Copy / Play	Cloud Accounts: dynamic groups resolve to live tasks
Keychain: keys and reusable Identities side by side	Terminal palettes with inline previews, plus custom schemes
Settings → Interface: tab styling with live preview, app theme grid

Quick start

1. First launch: choose a master password or continue without one (you can enable it, plus biometric unlock, later in Settings).
2. Add hosts: click + HOST, or just type user@host (Ctrl+K) to connect without saving. ~/.ssh/config imports in one click.
3. Connect: click a host card. Split panes, the Files sidebar, SFTP and snippets are one keystroke away.
4. Optional extras: AI chat (Settings > AI), MCP server (Settings > Security, setup guide), P2P sync between your devices (Settings > Sync, self-hosting guide).

Questions? Check the FAQ or open a Discussion.

Security

Everything sensitive is encrypted per-field at rest (Argon2id + ChaCha20-Poly1305), host keys are TOFU-pinned, sync payloads are end-to-end encrypted, plugins are Ed25519-signature-verified before execution, and there is no telemetry of any kind.

The full security model and the vulnerability disclosure policy live in SECURITY.md. Please report vulnerabilities privately.

Code signing policy

Free code signing provided by SignPath.io, certificate by SignPath Foundation.

The Windows binaries and installers (oryxis.exe, oryxis-setup-*.exe, oryxis-user-setup-*.exe) are Authenticode-signed in CI by SignPath. The private key never leaves SignPath's hardware security module. No private information is collected or shared as part of this process.

Roadmap

Oryxis ships small and often (roughly weekly). This section is forward-looking: items land incrementally as they are ready rather than being tied to a specific version. Latest stable is v0.9.0; CHANGELOG.md has the full history, and the roadmap discussion tracks it interactively.

Planned

• Advanced authentication: SSH certificate auth, FIDO2 / security-key keys (sk-ssh-ed25519, sk-ecdsa-sk), PKCS#11 / smartcard / YubiKey, and in-app SSH key generation (Ed25519 / RSA / ECDSA).
• Terminal: scrollback search, broadcast input across split panes, X11 forwarding (-X / -Y), OSC 8 hyperlinks, keyword highlighting with user-defined trigger actions, and a command palette.
• Session recordings: an in-app player (play / pause, seek, speed) and GIF export as an optional plugin.
• Mosh: a native Rust client for mosh's State Synchronization Protocol, interoperating with the stock mosh-server; sessions survive IP changes and sleep, with predictive local echo. This would be the first open-source mosh client to run natively on Windows (no Cygwin or WSL layer).
• Quick-connect OS integration: register as the ssh:// URL handler and accept oryxis user@host on the CLI.
• Importers & utilities: PuTTY / WinSCP / mRemoteNG / Termius config importers, Wake-on-LAN, an optional network tools panel (DNS, ping / traceroute, port test, TLS check, WHOIS, RBL), and SFTP zip / tar.gz compress and extract.
• Vault & sync: Argon2id auto-tuned to your machine, a curated terminal theme collection plus theme file import, extra sync snapshot backends (private GitHub repo via device code, any WebDAV server; ciphertext only, as always), one-click relay deploy (the app installs oryxis-relay on a host from your vault over SSH, with the script shown before it runs), connection health indicators with connection reuse, and group settings inheritance (per-parameter defaults hosts inherit, Termius-style).
• Legacy keyboard modes: per-host backspace / Home / End / function-key styles and per-host toggles for mouse reporting, remote resize and title changes.
• Host monitoring: agentless CPU / memory / disk / network gauges over the SSH connection you already have: a per-session panel plus a multi-host dashboard, opt-in per host, nothing installed on servers.
• China & CJK: a download mirror setting so fonts, plugins and updates work on mainland networks, Alibaba Cloud (ECS) and Tencent Cloud (CVM) providers, an East Asian ambiguous-width option, terminal background images, and a Chinese README.
• AI ops toolkit: the assistant graduates from generating shell strings to typed, structured operations synthesized for the host's actual OS, with dry-run previews on every state change, an audit journal, and secrets structurally excluded from model context. Local-first, bring-your-own-key, no hosted backend.
• Consistency & stability: a unified form system across all editors and portable export/import test hardening.

Exploring

• Team vaults over P2P sync: share a vault with teammates with no hosted server; per-member key wrapping, re-key on member removal, optional self-hosted relay mailbox for teams never online together.
• Multi-host AI agent: the typed-operation agent detached from a single tab, investigating across vault hosts over ad-hoc SSH channels, gated by explicit per-host opt-in.

Building from source

Rust stable (via rustup), plus:

• Linux: sudo apt install -y build-essential pkg-config libssl-dev libgtk-3-dev libwayland-dev libxkbcommon-dev
• macOS: Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install)
• Windows: Visual Studio Build Tools with the C++ workload

git clone https://github.com/wilsonglasser/oryxis.git
cd oryxis
cargo run             # debug
cargo build --release # release
cargo test --workspace

The workspace layout is documented in docs/ARCHITECTURE.md.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Open an issue to discuss before starting large PRs, and see CONTRIBUTING.md for the dev setup, quality gates and project conventions (i18n, keyboard navigation, secret handling).

License

Copyright (C) 2026 Wilson Glasser. Licensed under AGPL-3.0-or-later. Free and open-source forever: anyone can use, modify, and distribute Oryxis, but any modified version made available over a network must also share its source code under the same license. See NOTICE for details.

---

Built with Rust, for people who live in the terminal.