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telnety

Getting started with Telnety

Telnety is a cross-platform remote-access client for SSH, RDP, VNC, SFTP, Telnet, and Serial. This guide walks you through installing it, opening your first session, and learning the handful of shortcuts that make it feel fast on day one.

Install Telnety

Telnety ships native binaries for Windows 10/11, macOS 11 and later, modern Linux distributions, and Android 9+. Pick the install method for your operating system below. The Community edition is free and unlocks every protocol on a single device.

Windows

PowerShell
# Install via winget (recommended)
winget install Telnety.Telnety

# Or download the .exe installer from telnety.com/download
# Both the NSIS .exe and the MSI installers are signed.

macOS

bash
# Homebrew cask (recommended)
brew install --cask telnety

# Universal .dmg with Apple Silicon and Intel slices is also at
# https://telnety.com/download

Linux

bash
# Debian / Ubuntu
sudo dpkg -i telnety_1.0.0_amd64.deb

# Fedora / RHEL
sudo rpm -i telnety-1.0.0-1.x86_64.rpm

# Any distro
chmod +x Telnety-1.0.0.AppImage
./Telnety-1.0.0.AppImage

Android

Telnety for Android is published on Google Play and as a sideloadable APK on the download page. The Android client shares the same Rust core as the desktop app via flutter_rust_bridge, so SSH, SFTP, RDP, and VNC all work identically to the desktop client.

Every release is signed with an Ed25519 key whose fingerprint is published in the changelog. The first launch on macOS may show a Gatekeeper prompt — accept it once and the signature is trusted forever after.

First launch

The main window has four regions:

  • Sidebar — your host tree, host groups, recent connections, and the "+ New" button.
  • Tab bar — every active session is a tab. Drag tabs to reorder, or right-click for split-pane and broadcast options.
  • Workspace — the terminal, remote-desktop canvas, or SFTP browser belonging to the active tab.
  • Status bar — connection state, latency, protocol, and broadcast indicators.

On the first launch Telnety creates a local SQLite database in your user profile (%APPDATA%\Telnety on Windows, ~/Library/Application Support/Telnety on macOS, ~/.local/share/Telnety on Linux). Everything you save lives there until you opt in to cloud sync.

Your first connection

Let's open an SSH session to a host you already have keys for. Replace user@example.com with your own host.

  1. Click + New in the sidebar (or press Ctrl+N).
  2. On the Connection tab, enter a friendly name, the hostname, port (22 for SSH), and pick SSH as the protocol.
  3. Switch to the Authentication tab. Select SSH key, browse to your private key (or click Generate new to create an Ed25519 keypair on the spot), and enter your username.
  4. Click Test Connection. If it succeeds, click Save & Connect. Your terminal opens in a new tab.
The Quick Connect form accepts a URL-style shortcut
ssh://user@example.com:22
sftp://user@example.com
rdp://user@windows-server.local
vnc://10.0.0.5:5901

Command palette

The command palette (Ctrl+K on Windows/Linux, Cmd+K on macOS) is the fastest way to do almost anything: open a saved host, generate an SSH key, jump to the SFTP browser of the current session, or trigger one of the 36 built-in tools (ping, traceroute, port scan, DNS lookup, and so on).

Tabs and split panes

Every connection lives in a tab. Tabs can be split into panes for side-by-side terminals on the same host, or for tailing logs while you run commands. Telnety remembers your layout per workspace so reopening the app drops you back where you left off.

  • Ctrl+D / Ctrl+Shift+D — split right / split down.
  • Ctrl+Shift+B — toggle broadcast mode so keystrokes go to every pane in the tab.
  • Ctrl+Tab — cycle tabs; hold Shift to go backwards.

A 60-second tour

The Vault icon in the sidebar opens the encrypted credential store. It uses AES-256-GCM with an Argon2id-derived key and a device secret pinned to your machine. Unlock it once per session — on Windows 10/11 you can replace the master password with Windows Hello biometrics.

The Tools tab in the sidebar reveals the 36 built-in network and productivity tools. Open any tool in a tab without leaving your current session.

The Sessions button on the status bar shows in-progress recordings. Session recording captures every byte of the terminal stream in Asciicast v2 format so you can replay it locally or share it as an asciinema link.

Next steps

Now that you have the lay of the land, dig deeper into the protocol that matters most for your work:

  • SSH setup — Ed25519 keys, agent forwarding, jump hosts, host-key TOFU.
  • SFTP guide — the dual-pane browser, drag-and-drop, function-key shortcuts.
  • RDP guide — NLA, clipboard sync, mobile touch modes.
  • VNC guide — noVNC rendering, quality knobs, view-only mode.