Choosing an SSH client for macOS
"Which one is best" has no answer; "what do you actually do all day" does. Below are a few typical situations — including the ones where our own tool is the wrong choice.
Find the one that sounds like you
Mostly local commands, an occasional server
The built-in Terminal is enough. If you want splits, colour themes or triggers on output, move to iTerm2 — it is free, open source, and goes very deep on the local terminal.
Tools in this class focus on making the local terminal good; which server you reach is your business: put hosts and keys in ~/.ssh/config and type ssh alias. With a handful of machines this is the least fuss and the least that can go wrong.
A dozen machines or more, switching between them all day
The bottleneck shifts from "is the terminal nice" to "which machine am I on right now". What you need is connection management: hosts grouped, searchable, and their state visible — not a config file you re-read or a shell history you grep.
~/.ssh/config can hold all of it, but it cannot give you two things: a visible list with live state, and reuse of one authentication (see below).
You need the same machines from a phone, Windows or Linux
Then you want a cross-platform commercial client with cloud sync; Termius is the best known of these. It is subscription-based, and the payoff is picking up where you left off on another device.
Be clear about the trade: syncing means your connection details — depending on how you configure it, possibly your credentials — live on someone else’s server. That is not automatically wrong, but it is an exchange you should agree to knowingly.
Your company puts its machines behind a bastion
This is the case general-purpose clients tend to ignore. The machines sit behind something like JumpServer and logins are issued on demand — most clients know nothing about that, so you copy a login block from a web console into your terminal every single time.
Ask one question when you evaluate: "can it sign in to my bastion account and sync in the machines granted to me?" If yes, that whole step disappears. If no, no amount of terminal polish saves you from the copying.
Things that are easy to skip when choosing and grate on you daily
How long one authentication lasts
On machines with two-factor or one-time passwords this is the difference between pleasant and miserable. Some clients repeat the whole login for every new tab — a dozen codes a day. Others hold the connection after the first success, and every later tab, transfer and metric runs over it. Test with your most annoying host, not your easiest one.
Where credentials are kept
The system Keychain, a local encrypted file, or someone else’s cloud? There is no single right answer, but you should know which one it is. While you are there, check what happens to the credential when you delete a connection.
What happens when the link drops
Flaky networks are normal. Some clients open a new tab to reconnect, leave the dead one piling up in the sidebar, and lose the output you had. Others pick up in place with your earlier output still scrollable. You only feel this difference after a few days of use.
Whether moving a file means logging in again
Plenty of setups are "terminal over here, SFTP app over there", which means a second authentication every time you move a file. If you push configs or pull logs often, weigh this on its own.
Who MyShell fits, and who it does not
Said in full, so you do not find out after installing.
- You have a fleet to look after, not the occasional server.
- Your machines use two-factor or one-time passwords and repeating that is tiresome.
- Your company runs a JumpServer bastion.
- You would rather your credentials never left your own Mac.
You need cross-platform. macOS only — no Windows, no Linux, no mobile.
You need team sharing or cloud sync. Neither exists, and neither is planned: both would mean keeping your data somewhere else.
You mainly want a better local terminal. There is one, but it is not the focus, and iTerm2 is far more customisable.
You need to read the source. It is free, but not open source.
If those lined up
Free, no sign-up, macOS 12 and later. Install it, add a couple of machines, and delete it if it is not for you.