Getting started

Introduction

Burrow Client is a local-first SSH client for macOS and Linux. Your hosts, keys and passwords stay on your own machine.

On this page

What Burrow is

Burrow keeps your hosts, keys and passwords on your own computer. Secrets sit in an encrypted vault that only opens with your master password.

If you use more than one computer, you can sync them through a small server you host yourself. That server only ever stores data it can’t read.

There is no account to create. You set a master password and start.
Nothing phones home. Burrow has no analytics and no telemetry.
There is no cloud. Sync only happens through a server you run yourself, and it’s off by default.

Apart from your own servers, the only thing Burrow contacts is GitHub, and only when you check for updates. Updates explains what is sent.

Terminal tabs with split panes, side by side or stacked. See Terminal and tabs.
Local shell tabs next to your SSH sessions.
Snippets: save a command once and send it to a terminal, in every session or only on the hosts you pick. See Snippets.
Hosts with groups, search, notes and an optional status dot that shows whether a host is reachable. See Hosts.
SSH keys: generate Ed25519 or RSA 4096 keys, or import the ones you have. See Keychain.
Known hosts: you confirm a server’s fingerprint on the first connection, and a changed key stops the connection until you decide. See Known hosts.
SFTP browser with drag and drop upload, download, rename, delete and new folders. See SFTP file browser.
Auto-lock after idle time, on sleep and when the screen locks. See Settings and security.
Screenshot blocking, which hides the window from screenshots and screen recordings on macOS.
End-to-end encrypted sync through a server you run. See Sync between devices.
Updates you check for from Settings. See Updates.

Burrow runs on macOS and Linux. There is no Windows version.

It’s free and open source under the MIT license, and it’s made by one person. The code is on GitHub.