Getting started

SSH Ache is a desktop SSH client. It's local-first — your hosts and keys stay on your machine, and you don't need an account to use it. Teams and cloud sync are optional add-ons you can turn on later.

Two editions, two apps

The builds below are SSH Ache Teams: every local feature, plus optional end-to-end encrypted sharing on free and paid plans. Running solo, it needs no account and costs nothing. If you want the individual-only, Apache-2.0 build with no server code in it at all, take the community edition instead — everything in this Guide applies to both, and only the Teams section is Teams-only.

They install as separate apps — "SSH Ache Teams" (com.sshache.teams) and "SSH Ache" (com.sshache.app) — so you can keep both. They do share ~/.ssh-ache, so your saved connections and settings carry over either way.

Install

Homebrew (macOS)

# SSH Ache Teams — the build this site distributes
brew install --cask SSH-Ache/sshache/sshache-teams

# Community edition (Apache-2.0, individual use)
brew install --cask SSH-Ache/sshache/sshache

Direct download

Grab the installer for your OS from the download page:
https://sshache.com/download

Builds are published for macOS, Windows, and Linux. See the download page for the latest release and the per-OS install notes (including how to get past the first-launch Gatekeeper prompt on macOS).

First launch

1. Open SSH Ache. You land on the Dashboard with an empty connection list.
2. Click + New host (or Add host) to save your first connection — see Connecting to a host.
3. Already have a ~/.ssh/config? Use Import to pull your existing hosts (including their ProxyJump links) straight into the vault.

No sign-in, no cloud call — everything so far is on your machine.

Where things are stored

• Hosts & settings — a local database in your OS app-data directory.
• Secrets (passwords, key passphrases, private keys) — the OS keychain (Keychain on macOS, Credential Manager on Windows, Secret Service on Linux), never in plaintext on disk.
• Known host keys — tracked locally so a changed server key is caught and refused.

Optional: turn on the cloud

Two features are backed by the SSH Ache cloud, and both are opt-in:

• Teams — share connections with teammates, end-to-end encrypted.
• Personal cloud vault — sync your own connections across your devices.

To use either, you connect the desktop app to your account through the browser — you never type an email or password into the desktop app. See Teams → Overview for the linking flow.

Next steps

• Connecting to a host
• Terminal features
• SFTP & file transfer
• Security model