ShuttleSCP

A graphical SFTP and FTP client for Linux, macOS and Windows, inspired by WinSCP: your computer's files on the left, the server's on the right, and copying between them is a drag, a right-click or a key press away.

Written in Rust with relm4 and GTK 4.

Status: public beta. It is used day to day on Linux and macOS, and the Windows version is new; feedback is very welcome: please open an issue. See the changelog for what each release brought.

Features

Connections

• SFTP and SCP over SSH, and FTP with plain, explicit or implicit TLS (FTPS), in passive or active mode.
• SSH login with a password, a private key file (OpenSSH or PuTTY .ppk, with its passphrase if protected) or the keys of an SSH agent (the desktop's; on Windows, Windows' OpenSSH agent or PuTTY's Pageant).
• Saved sites, with passwords kept in the desktop keyring (GNOME Keyring, KWallet...), the macOS Keychain or the Windows Credential Manager, never in a plain file.
• Export and import of sites, with saved passwords encrypted under a passphrase you choose, to move them to another computer.
• Several connections at once, each in its own tab with its own colour. The tab, its panes and its transfer lists share that colour, so it is always clear which belongs to which.

Files

• Two file panes, sortable by name, size or date, with the desktop's file icons (on macOS, the ones Finder shows; on Windows, Explorer's).
• On Windows, a server file whose name Windows does not allow (such as notes:v2.txt) is downloaded with the character written as %3A, as WinSCP does.
• A drive list on both sides: this computer's disks, and the server's (its mounted disks and network shares on Linux, its volumes on macOS, its drive letters on Windows).
• Upload, download, move, rename, delete and create folders from the right-click menu or the keyboard (Delete, F2).
• Drag and drop between the panes, or onto a folder in the same pane, then choose Copy Here or Move Here. Select several files by dragging a box over them from an empty spot (anywhere but a file's icon or name), as in a file manager.
• Double-click a local file to open it in its usual app.
• The local pane remembers the last folder on each disk, and the app reopens where you left off.

Transfers

• Several transfers run side by side. Each one shows its folders and files as a tree, with progress, speed and time left.
• Pause a transfer and resume it later, even after restarting the app, or pause, resume or stop single files while the rest carries on.
• A file that already exists is never replaced without asking: overwrite, skip or cancel, for one file or all of them.
• Interrupted transfers continue where they stopped, even after the app was closed or the connection dropped.
• Files being written show in red in the panes until they are complete. Finished transfers move to Completed or Failed, where failed ones can be retried.
• Quitting or closing a tab while transfers run asks first.

Everything else

• A compact interface that follows your GTK theme, light or dark. On macOS it follows the Mac: the menu bar at the top of the screen, window buttons on the left, the system's light or dark appearance, Mac-style icons.
• A log of every session and transfer, with selectable detail, shown in the app and kept in a file.
• In English, French, Spanish, German, Brazilian Portuguese or Simplified Chinese (see Languages).

Languages

ShuttleSCP's interface is in English, French, Spanish, German, Brazilian Portuguese and Simplified Chinese. Pick one in File › Preferences (Ctrl+,), then restart ShuttleSCP.

The translations other than English were made with AI and have not yet been reviewed by native speakers, so they may contain mistakes; each is marked "machine translation" in the language list until someone has checked it. Corrections, and new languages, are very welcome: see CONTRIBUTING.md. Messages that come from servers or the system, and a few from deep inside the program (such as some error messages), are still in English.

On Linux, Chinese needs a Chinese font, which most desktops install (for example Noto Sans CJK, fonts-noto-cjk on Debian and Ubuntu); without one, the text shows as empty boxes.

Installing

Linux

Download the AppImage from the ShuttleSCP web page or the latest release. It is one file holding ShuttleSCP and everything it needs, for 64-bit Linux from 2020 on (it is tested on Ubuntu 20.04, 22.04 and 24.04 and on Debian 12 and 13; Fedora, Linux Mint and the like work the same way):

chmod +x ShuttleSCP-*-x86_64.AppImage
./ShuttleSCP-*-x86_64.AppImage

The first run adds ShuttleSCP to your desktop's app launcher. It checks for new versions (at most once a day; Help › Check for Updates to check now, or to turn it off), shows a new one in the status bar, and installs it only when it is signed with the ShuttleSCP release key. An update can wait until running transfers finish.

macOS

Download the disk image (.dmg) from the ShuttleSCP web page or the latest release, open it and drag ShuttleSCP onto Applications. It runs on Macs with Apple silicon (M1 or later) and macOS 26 (Tahoe) or newer.

ShuttleSCP is not signed with a paid Apple Developer ID, so the first time macOS asks to confirm it: right-click (or Control-click) ShuttleSCP in Applications, choose Open, then Open again. If it only offers "Move to Trash", open System Settings › Privacy & Security and click "Open Anyway". It checks for new versions and offers to download them; it does not replace itself.

Windows

Download the installer (ShuttleSCP-…-windows-x64-setup.exe) from the ShuttleSCP web page or the latest release and run it. It installs ShuttleSCP for your user only (no administrator rights needed), with a Start menu entry and an uninstaller under Settings › Apps. It runs on 64-bit Windows 10 and 11.

The installer is not signed yet (see Code signing policy), so the first time Windows SmartScreen may say "Windows protected your PC": click "More info", then "Run anyway". ShuttleSCP checks for new versions and, when you agree, downloads the new installer (checked against the ShuttleSCP release key), runs it and restarts.

You can also build it from source, as described below.

Building

You need:

• Rust 1.88 or newer (rustup.rs).

• GTK 4 (4.14 or newer) development files, and a C compiler:

  Distribution	Command
  Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, Zorin	sudo apt install build-essential libgtk-4-dev
  Fedora	sudo dnf install gcc gtk4-devel
  Arch, Manjaro	sudo pacman -S base-devel gtk4

• To save passwords: a desktop keyring that speaks the Secret Service protocol (GNOME Keyring or KWallet, which most desktops already run).

On macOS, GTK 4 and the rest come from Homebrew: packaging/macos/install-build-deps.sh installs them (plus the Xcode command line tools, xcode-select --install). Passwords go to the login Keychain.

On Windows, GTK 4 and the rest come from MSYS2, and Rust builds with its GNU toolchain (rustup toolchain install stable-x86_64-pc-windows-gnu): in an MSYS2 UCRT64 shell, packaging/windows/install-build-deps.sh installs them, and cargo +stable-x86_64-pc-windows-gnu run --release builds and runs it. Passwords go to the Credential Manager. See BUILDING.md for the details.

Then:

git clone https://github.com/dsalvado/shuttlescp.git
cd shuttlescp
cargo run --release

The program is target/release/shuttlescp. To build the AppImage yourself, run packaging/linux/build-appimage.sh; on a Mac, packaging/macos/build-dmg.sh builds the self-contained app and its disk image, and packaging/macos/run-dev.sh runs a debug build as an app (cargo run starts it without its Dock icon); on Windows, packaging/windows/build-bundle.sh and build-installer.sh build the program folder and its installer. See BUILDING.md for release builds and the build information shown in the app, and docs/RELEASING.md for how releases are made, signed and published.

Where it keeps things

What	Where
Settings and saved sites	~/.config/shuttlescp/ (macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/shuttlescp/; Windows: %APPDATA%\shuttlescp\)
Log and unfinished transfers	~/.local/state/shuttlescp/ (macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/shuttlescp/; Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%\shuttlescp\)
Passwords	Your desktop keyring, under "ShuttleSCP" (macOS: the login Keychain, under "shuttlescp"; Windows: the Credential Manager, under "shuttlescp:…")

Project layout

• crates/shuttlescp-core: everything that is not the user interface (sites, settings, the keyring, SSH, SFTP and FTP, the transfer engine, logging). It does not depend on GTK, so other front ends can reuse it.
• crates/shuttlescp-gtk: the front end for Linux, macOS and Windows, built with relm4 and GTK 4.
• packaging/linux, packaging/macos, packaging/windows: the AppImage, the macOS app and disk image, and the Windows program folder and installer.

Run the tests with cargo test --workspace.

How this was built

ShuttleSCP was built with Claude Code, Anthropic's AI coding agent, and I want to be upfront about that. I moved my laptop from Windows 10 to Linux and missed WinSCP, which does not run well under Wine, so I set out to build the tool I wanted, in Rust, and to use the project to learn modern project engineering with AI tools.

The split of work: Claude wrote the code, tests and documentation. I decided what to build and how it should look and behave, reviewed every change, tested it against my own servers, and made the calls on design, security and releases (for example signed updates, keeping the core free of GTK for other platforms, and publishing under the GPL). Commits made with Claude carry a Co-Authored-By: Claude line, so the history shows exactly which they are.

I'm David Salvador; more about me at dsalvado.ca.

Code signing policy

The Windows program and installer are not signed with a code-signing certificate yet, which is why Windows SmartScreen asks before running the installer the first time.

• How releases are made: every release is built by GitHub Actions from this repository's source by the release workflow, never on a personal computer, and published with SHA-256 checksums. Updates are only installed when signed with the ShuttleSCP release key. The GTK libraries and other components bundled with it are their projects' own files, included unchanged.
• Team roles: David Salvador (dsalvado) is the maintainer, and reviews, merges and releases every change. The code is written with Claude Code (see How this was built).
• Privacy: ShuttleSCP collects no information about you. It connects only to the servers you add and, to look for updates, to GitHub (which can be turned off). See the privacy policy.

Security

Please report security problems privately, as described in SECURITY.md, rather than in a public issue.

Licence

ShuttleSCP is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. See LICENSE.