Oryxis
A modern SSH client built entirely in Rust. Fast, encrypted, native.
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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 | Dual-pane GUI and an interactive console | Paid plan | CLI only | Basic panel |
| Price | Free | Free tier + subscription | Free | Free |
Install
Windows
or, from a terminal:
winget install WilsonGlasser.Oryxis
Arch Linux (AUR)
yay -S oryxis-bin
Direct downloads from the latest release:
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, TOTP autofill for 2FA hosts, and
stored passwords offered at
sudo prompts (never sent on their own).
- The full SSH pipeline. Auto-auth, multi-hop jump chains, SOCKS /
HTTP / command proxies, agent forwarding, standalone
-L/-R/-D port
forwarding, expect-style login scripts for menu-driven bastions
(JumpServer and friends).
- Bring your hosts along. One import reads what you already have:
~/.ssh/config, PuTTY, KiTTY, WinSCP, mRemoteNG, MobaXterm,
SecureCRT, Xshell, FinalShell, Termius or any CSV. Pick the file
(or the sessions folder) and the format is detected for you.
- More than SSH. Telnet and serial consoles for the gear that never
learned SSH, raw TCP lines for console servers, ZMODEM transfers,
local shells, and one-click RDP/VNC through an SSH tunnel.
- Sessions that survive the network. Switch mosh on for a host and
the shell rides out sleep, a change of Wi-Fi and a change of address,
with the interface saying how long the link has been out of touch
rather than pretending it is fine. A native Rust client speaking the
stock
mosh-server's protocol, so there is nothing extra to install
on your machine.
- A real terminal. alacritty-based emulator, split panes, session
groups, per-host themes, an optional translucent background or
background image, bundled
Nerd Fonts plus a downloadable font pack (JetBrains Mono, Fira Code,
MesloLGS and more), smart tabs that flag long-running commands,
per-host command history, and a per-host East Asian ambiguous-width
setting so CJK TUIs line up.
- 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. Prefer typing? An
interactive SFTP console speaks
sftp(1)'s commands (get, put,
mget, lcd, globs, Tab completion, inline progress), opening as a
pane of the session you are already in (stacked, beside or zoomed,
your choice) with one switch between terminal, console and files.
- Session recording. Encrypted at rest; exports to asciinema
.cast
(theme embedded) or plain transcript, output-only by design.
- The sysadmin toolbox. An optional network tools panel (off by
default, opens as its own tab): DNS records, ping, traceroute, TCP
port test, HTTP redirect chain and certificate inspection, WHOIS, and
the public spam blocklists.
- 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: English, Português, Español, Français, Deutsch, Italiano,
简体中文, 繁體中文, 日本語, Русский, فارسی, العربية, עברית, 한국어, Polski,
Türkçe, Bahasa Indonesia, Tiếng Việt, Українська, ไทย, हिन्दी, Čeština,
Ελληνικά.
The complete inventory lives in the feature tour.
Using tmux? Logs and command history under tmux
explains what works out of the box and what you install yourself.
Want the file browser to track your shell exactly?
Following the shell's directory has the snippet.
Getting a copy of your vault off this machine, into a cloud folder or
anywhere else? Backups and where to keep them
covers sync, export, and the tools that carry a file the rest of the
way.
Screenshots
Click any thumbnail for the full-size image.
<a href="resources/screen_1.png"><img src="resources/screen_1.png" width="390" /></a>
<em>Hosts dashboard: card grid, groups, distro auto-detection</em>
<a href="resources/screen_2.png"><img src="resources/screen_2.png" width="390" /></a>
<em>Dual-pane SFTP: drag-and-drop, multi-select, edit-in-place</em>
<a href="resources/screen_3.png"><img src="resources/screen_3.png" width="390" /></a>
<em>Streaming AI sidebar with per-block Copy / Play</em>
<a href="resources/screen_4.png"><img src="resources/screen_4.png" width="390" /></a>
<em>Cloud Accounts: AWS / Kubernetes providers, multi-region fan-out</em>
<a href="resources/screen_5.png"><img src="resources/screen_5.png" width="390" /></a>
<em>Keychain: keys and reusable Identities side by side</em>
<a href="resources/screen_7.png"><img src="resources/screen_7.png" width="390" /></a>
<em>Terminal palettes with inline previews, plus custom schemes</em>
<a href="resources/screen_6.png"><img src="resources/screen_6.png" width="390" /></a>
<em>Settings → Interface: tab styling with live preview, app theme grid</em>
Quick start
- First launch: choose a master password or continue without one
(you can enable it, plus biometric unlock, later in Settings).
- Add hosts: click
+ HOST, or just type user@host (Ctrl+K) to
connect without saving. Coming from another SSH client? Import
brings its saved sessions over in one step.
- Connect: click a host card. Split panes, the Files sidebar, SFTP
and snippets are one keystroke away.
- 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 v0.17.0;
CHANGELOG.md has the full history, and the
roadmap discussion
tracks it interactively.
Planned
- Multiple vaults: keep separate encrypted vaults (Personal, Work)
instead of one. Each has its own lock password, so isolation is real:
two vaults never share a key. A unified unlock is offered for people
who want the split for organization rather than secrecy, opening the
linked ones together; that is a per-vault choice, not the default.
- Native FIDO2: talk to security keys directly (USB / NFC) for
sk-ssh-ed25519 / sk-ecdsa-sk, without delegating the touch to an
external agent.
- Vault & sync: one-click relay deploy (the app installs
oryxis-relay on a host from your vault over SSH, with the script
shown before it runs).
- China & CJK: Alibaba Cloud (ECS) and Tencent Cloud (CVM)
providers.
- Offline mode: one switch, offered at first run and in Settings,
that stops Oryxis from making any request of its own. Update checks,
font downloads and the plugin catalog go quiet; what still travels is
what you asked for, the hosts you dial and the backends you
configured yourself. One build, not a separate edition, so turning it
off gives everything back. For machines that never had a network, an
offline bundle download ships alongside the ordinary installer with
the plugins and font packs already inside and the switch already on.
- 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.
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.
- Storage browser plugins: S3-compatible, SMB, and Chinese-cloud
object storage (Huawei OBS / Tencent COS / Alibaba OSS) browsing as
optional plugins on the existing signed-plugin pipeline.
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.