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

A modern, lightweight SSH/SFTP/FTP client built with Rust and Tauri 2. Uses ~98% less memory than FinalShell (~34 MB vs ~1.7 GB). Installer under 10 MB — 12× smaller.

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

Why R-Shell? · Features · Install · Screenshots · Contributing · License

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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 popular SSH clients (FinalShell, MobaXterm, Xshell) are built on Java or Electron, which means high memory usage even when idle. R-Shell is built with Rust + Tauri 2, delivering native performance with a fraction of the memory footprint.

Memory Comparison (Real-World Test)

Both apps running side-by-side on macOS (Apple Silicon, 16 GB RAM), measured with macOS footprint (same metric as Activity Monitor):

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

R-Shell uses approximately 98% less memory than FinalShell — that's ~1.7 GB saved for your IDE, browser, and Docker.

Installer Size Comparison

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

No bundled JVM, no Chromium — Tauri uses the OS native webview, so the installer stays tiny.

Why does this matter?

• Developers often keep SSH clients open all day alongside IDEs, browsers, and Docker
• FinalShell alone can consume over 10% of a 16 GB machine's RAM while idle
• Rust's zero-cost abstractions mean low memory without sacrificing features
• No JVM startup overhead — R-Shell launches instantly

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🎯 About

R-Shell is a free, open-source, cross-platform SSH client that combines an interactive terminal, a dual-panel file manager, real-time system & GPU monitoring, and log viewing — all in one VS Code-like workspace. Built with Rust for native performance and minimal resource usage, it's a lightweight alternative to FinalShell, MobaXterm, and Xshell.

• 🚀 Native Performance — Tauri 2 + Rust backend, not Electron or Java. ~34 MB memory footprint vs FinalShell's ~1.7 GB.
• 🎨 AI-Generated Frontend — The UI was generated from Figma designs
• 🤖 AI-Assisted Development — The entire codebase is built with GitHub Copilot
• 🌍 Cross-Platform — macOS, Windows, and Linux

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✨ Features

🔌 Multi-Protocol Connections

Protocol	Authentication	Description
SSH	Password, Public Key (with passphrase)	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

• Connection Manager — Tree-view sidebar with folders, favorites, tags, drag-and-drop organization
• Connection Profiles — Save, import/export (JSON), duplicate, edit saved connections
• Session Restore — Automatically reconnects your previous 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 via xterm.js v5 — supports vim, htop, top, less, and all interactive programs
• WebSocket streaming — low-latency bidirectional I/O with flow control (inspired by ttyd)
• WebGL renderer — hardware-accelerated rendering with automatic canvas fallback
• 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

🪟 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, 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
• Works over SSH, SFTP, FTP, and FTPS — unified file operations across all protocols
• File operations — create, rename, delete, copy files and directories
• 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
• Transfer queue — queued transfers with progress, speed, ETA, cancel, and retry
• Recursive directory transfer — uploads/downloads 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 percentage 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 — color-coded: 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 — automatically 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)
• Line numbers + timestamps + 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

⌨️ 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 – 9	Focus terminal group
Ctrl+W	Close active tab
Ctrl+Tab	Next tab
Cmd/Ctrl+F	Search in terminal
F3 / Shift+F3	Find next / previous

🔧 Additional Features

• VS Code-like layout — resizable left/right sidebars + bottom panel with 5 layout presets (Default, Minimal, Focus, Full Stack, Zen)
• 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
• 49 Tauri commands — comprehensive Rust backend API

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🛠 Tech Stack

Backend — Why It's Lightweight

• Tauri 2 — native desktop framework, uses the OS webview instead of bundling Chromium (unlike Electron)
• Rust — zero-cost abstractions, no garbage collector, no JVM — this is why R-Shell uses ~34 MB vs FinalShell's ~1.7 GB
• russh / russh-sftp — pure Rust SSH & SFTP protocol 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 — 48+ accessible component primitives
• xterm.js v5 — terminal emulation with WebGL, search, web-links, fit, overlay addons
• Recharts — data visualization for monitoring
• React Hook Form — form handling
• Lucide Icons — icon set

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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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🚀 Development

Prerequisites

• Node.js ≥ 18
• pnpm
• Rust & Cargo

Quick Start

git clone https://github.com/GOODBOY008/r-shell.git
cd r-shell
pnpm install

# Web only
pnpm dev

# Desktop with Tauri
pnpm tauri dev

Build for Production

pnpm build && pnpm tauri build

Testing

pnpm test          # Frontend (Vitest)
cd src-tauri && cargo test  # Rust
pnpm test:e2e      # E2E

Version Bumping

pnpm run version:patch   # 1.0.0 → 1.0.1
pnpm run version:minor   # 1.0.0 → 1.1.0
pnpm run version:major   # 1.0.0 → 2.0.0

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📁 Project Structure

r-shell/
├── src/
│   ├── components/           # React components
│   │   ├── ui/               # 48+ shadcn/ui primitives
│   │   ├── terminal/         # Split panes, tab groups, grid renderer
│   │   ├── pty-terminal.tsx   # PTY terminal (WebSocket + xterm.js)
│   │   ├── connection-*.tsx   # Connection dialog, manager, tabs
│   │   ├── file-*.tsx         # File browser, panels
│   │   ├── sftp-panel.tsx     # Dual-panel SFTP manager
│   │   ├── sync-dialog.tsx    # Directory synchronization
│   │   ├── transfer-*.tsx     # Transfer queue & controls
│   │   ├── system-monitor.tsx # CPU/MEM/Disk/GPU monitor
│   │   ├── network-monitor.tsx# Network stats
│   │   ├── log-monitor.tsx    # Multi-source log viewer
│   │   └── settings-modal.tsx # 6-tab settings
│   ├── lib/                   # State management & utilities
│   └── styles/                # Global CSS
├── src-tauri/                 # Tauri / Rust backend
│   └── src/
│       ├── ssh/               # SSH/SFTP implementation
│       ├── ftp_client.rs      # FTP/FTPS client
│       ├── commands.rs        # 49 Tauri commands
│       ├── websocket_server.rs# PTY WebSocket streaming
│       └── connection_manager.rs # Thread-safe session lifecycle
└── docs/                      # Documentation

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🤝 Contributing

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

Quick Links:

• Contributing Guidelines
• Code of Conduct
• Version Bump Guide
• Layout Guide
• Quick Start

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.

🌟 Star History

💬 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 ⭐!