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Electerm: A Free and Open-Source SSH/SFTP Client for All Platforms

electermssh clientsftp clientopen source terminalcross-platform ssh
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A few days ago, in the article FinalShell, we introduced FinalShell. This time, we introduce another SSH client, Electerm. Electerm is an SSH/SFTP client developed based on Electron, supporting Linux, Mac, and Windows operating systems. It is free and open-source.

Features

  • Acts as a terminal/file manager or SSH/SFTP client (similar to Xshell)
  • Global hotkey to toggle window visibility (similar to Guake, default value is Ctrl + 2)
  • Multi-platform support (Linux, Mac, Windows)
  • 🇺🇸 🇨🇳 🇧🇷 🇷🇺 🇪🇸 🇫🇷 🇹🇷 🇭🇰 Supports multiple languages (electerm-locales, contributions and bug fixes welcome)
  • Double-click to edit remote files (small files)
  • Use the built-in editor to edit local files (small files)
  • Authentication using public key + password
  • Zmodem (rz, sz)
  • Transparent window (Mac, Windows)
  • Terminal background images
  • Global/session proxy
  • Quick commands
  • Sync bookmarks, themes, and quick commands to GitHub/Gitee secret gist
  • Quick input

Download and Install Electerm

Electerm supports Linux, Mac, and Windows operating systems. Go directly to the project address: https://github.com/electerm/electerm/releases to download the latest version for your operating system.

For Windows systems, you can download the compiled package from the author, such as eleterm-1.11.6-win-x64.tar.gz. After extracting, double-click electerm.exe to use it.

Some Settings

Set Chinese Language:

Electerm defaults to an English interface. You can open the settings to change the language to Chinese, as shown in the image below.

Set Font:

The default font in Electerm may not look appealing. You can modify the font in the settings. We recommend Consolas and Microsoft YaHei fonts.

Set Synchronization:

Electerm can sync bookmarks (server connection information) to GitHub or Gitee. This article uses Gitee as an example.

  1. First, generate a new token in the Gitee backend: https://gitee.com/profile/personal_access_tokens. Follow the prompts to generate it. Note that the token will only appear once, so save it carefully.

  1. Open the synchronization function in Electerm, switch to gitee, fill in the Gitee token you just obtained, and check the "Encrypt" option for synchronization. Otherwise, server passwords and other information will be synced in plaintext (very dangerous). Then save and upload the settings.

If you change computers, set it up the same way and click "Download Settings" to sync bookmarks to your local machine.

If you do not want to use the synchronization function, you can also export and import bookmarks in the bookmark settings.

Some Useful Features

Since using the quick commands in FinalShell, I have become very fond of them. Electerm also supports quick commands (fast commands), allowing you to add common and complex Linux commands for faster efficiency.

The downside is that Electerm's quick commands do not support grouping, synchronization, or export. If you change devices, you have to re-enter the commands. If you have strong requirements, you can provide feedback to the author on GitHub.

Click the Terminal info in the bottom right corner to view server CPU, memory, network, and other information.

Electerm defaults to opening a PowerShell window upon startup. Personally, I am not used to using PowerShell. If you have installed the WSL subsystem, you can set the default execWindows to System32/wsl.exe.

This way, every time you open it, the WSL subsystem will launch instead of PowerShell.

Summary

Overall, Electerm is quite good. It is free, open-source, supports multiple platforms, and comes with a Chinese interface. Electerm is not yet very mature and may encounter some bugs during use, but it fully meets daily server management and usage needs. The author updates very frequently, and you can report bugs on GitHub.

I would like to point out that the usage instructions for Electerm on GitHub are too simple. Many settings require you to explore and search issues to figure out. I hope the author will improve the documentation later.

Previously introduced similar tools on the blog include:

Electerm project addresses: