Noverterm

A native SSH terminal client for macOS and Windows, built with Tauri 2 & Rust. No Electron, no bloat.

Noverterm is a lightweight SSH terminal app with multi-session tabs, SFTP file transfer, port forwarding, SSH key management, and snippets. All data stays in a local SQLite database. It is designed as a fast, native alternative to Electron-based SSH clients.

Website · Download

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Why Noverterm?

Most SSH clients today are Electron wrappers — hundreds of MBs of RAM just to run a terminal.

Noverterm is different. Built on Tauri 2 and Rust, it delivers:

• ~50MB memory footprint (vs 500MB+ for Electron apps)
• Native performance — no JavaScript runtime overhead
• Real security — Rust's memory safety, no CVE-ridden dependencies

Features

✅ What's Done

Feature	Description
SSH Connections	Password & SSH key auth, host fingerprint verification, known hosts manager
Multi-Session Tabs	Multiple SSH sessions in tabs, duplicate sessions, instant local terminal
Terminal I/O	Immediate idle SSH output, bounded binary streaming, ordered input with visible write failures
TUI Keyboard	Negotiated Kitty keyboard protocol, modifier/repeat/release events, IME text and paste handling
Port Forwarding	Local SSH tunneling with saved presets, several ports per preset
SFTP File Transfer	Dual-pane browser (local or any host per pane), drag & drop, multi-select, recursive folder transfer, progress, conflict resolution, create/rename/delete
Snippets	Save and execute frequent commands across active sessions, pin them to the sidebar as one-click launchers with a custom icon
SSH Key Manager	Import and manage SSH keys
Connection Groups	Organize connections into folders
Auto-Update	Built-in updater — download and install updates from GitHub Releases
Modern UI	Dark theme, responsive layout, keyboard shortcuts, context menus

Keyboard encoding uses the layout information exposed by the WebView. On WebKit, previously unseen shifted punctuation on non-US layouts may lack its unshifted key value; the browser-reported key and physical alternate remain available.

🚧 In Progress

• Linux support

Screenshots

Coming soon

Installation

macOS (Apple Silicon)

Download the latest .dmg from Releases.

Windows

Download the .exe installer from Releases.

Build from Source

# Prerequisites: Node.js 22+, Rust stable, cargo-make
cargo make frontend:install
cargo make tauri:build

The bundled app will be in target/release/bundle/.

Tech Stack

Layer	Technology
Frontend	Svelte 5, Vite, TailwindCSS
Desktop	Tauri 2
SSH	Russh (pure Rust SSH library)
Async Runtime	Tokio
Database	SQLite + Diesel ORM (local, in the app data folder)

Project Structure

noverterm/
├── packages/
│   ├── desktop/        # Tauri app (Rust + Svelte UI), owns the SQLite database
│   ├── shared/         # Types shared between the Rust commands and the UI
│   └── orm/            # Diesel ORM models and schema
├── Cargo.toml          # Rust workspace
└── Makefile.toml       # cargo-make tasks

Development

# Install dependencies
cargo make frontend:install

# Run in dev mode
cargo make tauri:dev

# Run lint & typecheck
cargo make lint          # Rust clippy
cargo make fmt           # Rust format
npm run lint             # Frontend ESLint (in packages/desktop/ui)
npm run check            # Svelte typecheck (in packages/desktop/ui)

License

Noverterm is Source Available under the Business Source License 1.1 (BSL 1.1).

• ✅ Free for personal & internal company use
• ✅ Fork and modify for your own use
• 🚫 No commercial resale or managed hosting
• 📅 Auto-converts to MIT License on 2029-05-25

See LICENSE for details.

Contributing

This repository is public for transparency and security auditing.

• 🐛 Bug reports → Open an Issue
• 🔒 Security disclosures → Contact maintainer directly
• 🔀 Pull Requests → Not accepted (fork freely instead)

Acknowledgements

Built with:

• 🦀 Tauri — Desktop framework
• ⚡ Russh — Pure Rust SSH implementation
• 🎨 Svelte — UI framework

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Noverterm — Because your SSH client shouldn't need its own memory allocator.