Tutorials, guides and deep-dives for the free and open-source terminal client.
The bookmark form now has a copy button. It hands you the same one-line connection string the Quick Connect box and electerm:// links accept — or the complete bookmark record as JSON. Here is what each format carries, what it deliberately leaves out, and the one kind of password that will not survive the round trip.
Electerm opens a session on a single click, so a habitual double click fires the action twice. A new setting makes the sidebar wait for the second click — in the bookmarks and history lists, with groups, Enter and touch devices deliberately left alone.
A new setting installs an electerm command into your PATH on Windows, macOS and Linux. What it writes on each platform, why macOS uses a small wrapper script, how to install it by hand, and how to undo it.
IPv6 works in every electerm tunnel mode — L→R, R→L and the dynamic SOCKS proxy. Here is which field takes the address, why a bracketed [::1] fails, and the routing bug IPv6 makes easy to hit.
Put a photo, a URL, your own text, or the tab number behind a terminal — and dim, blur and desaturate it with five filters so the text stays readable. Where the setting lives, what each mode actually paints, and two things that will surprise you (the WebGL renderer hides it, and half the labels are untranslated).
With tmux mouse mode on, a plain drag stops selecting text and the selection dies on mouseup. A new electerm setting forwards clicks only while Alt is held — so the wheel still pages tmux, drag selects locally, and Option+click still reaches the app.
Three settings decide what electerm shows at launch — whether to open a default local terminal at all, which bookmarks to open, and whether to restore a saved workspace instead. Plus where the local shell actually starts, and the precedence order electerm follows.
A workspace stores the split layout plus the bookmarks open in each pane, so a 2x2 grid of production hosts comes back with one click — how saving, loading and deleting work, what is and is not captured, and how to make a workspace the thing electerm opens on launch.
Drag any file onto the terminal in electerm and pick what happens — upload it with trz (trzsz) or rz (zmodem), or just paste its quoted path into the shell. How the drop dialog works for SSH, serial and local sessions, and how to set a default so it never asks again.
Electerm features live on bookmarks — save an ssh, telnet, serial, vnc, rdp, ftp or web bookmark to unlock auth, SFTP, tunnels, hopping, triggers and sync. Typing telnet/ssh in a local terminal bypasses all of that. No-save one-offs go through Quick Connect.
New electerm intro video, fully generated by AI with workbuddy AI (deepseek v4.1flash): script, voiceover, editing and subtitles in Chinese and English, in about 3 minutes.
electerm now has an official AtomGit mirror — same code and release binaries as GitHub, served from inside China. Every download card on the homepage has a new AtomGit(CN) button.
Reach private servers through one or more jump hosts in electerm — how the ordered hop list works, per-hop auth (agent, keys on the jump host, passwords), the v1.50.65 order change, and hopping for SSH, VNC and RDP.
Master all three SSH tunnel types in electerm — local (-L), remote (-R) and dynamic SOCKS (-D): what each one does, when to use it, and how to set it up click by click in the bookmark editor.
Since v5.5.35, the command history panel and the quick commands panel each have two homes — the footer (default) and the right side panel. How to move them, how the footer buttons behave while docked, and why the choice sticks across reloads.
Electerm syncs bookmarks, themes, quick commands and settings to a secret gist, your own server, electerm cloud or any WebDAV drive — with per-type encryption, upload/download preview, auto sync and file export. How the five backends work and how to pick one.
By default electerm keeps bookmarks, passwords and settings in an OS-specific folder. Set the DATA_PATH environment variable and you can move all of it — to another drive, a synced folder, or a portable USB stick. Default locations, migration steps, and per-OS guides for Windows, macOS and Linux.
electerm-web is the self-hosted web version of electerm — the full terminal client (SSH, SFTP, FTP, RDP, VNC, SPICE, Telnet) running on your own server in Docker. When to choose it over desktop or cloud, how to deploy in one command, and how to lock it down and customize it.
Electerm groups all bookmark passwords on one Settings page — see which hosts share a password, copy it, search it, and rotate it across every affected bookmark at once.
The heartbeat icon in electerm's session toolbar sends Enter every few seconds when you are idle — resetting TMOUT and app-layer idle killers that TCP keepalive cannot reach. Where to find it, what it does, and when to turn it off.
Classic tab view forces you to flip between terminal and SFTP. Electerm's split-view toggle in the session toolbar shows them side by side instead — where the icon lives, how tab vs split modes differ, and when to use each.
One number in electerm settings (macOS and Windows desktop app only) makes the whole app window translucent, so you can read a doc, watch a dashboard, or copy a command from the app behind it — without switching windows. Where the slider lives, what it really does, and when to turn it back up.
Type cd in the terminal and the SFTP file panel moves with you — click a folder in SFTP and the terminal follows back. How to turn on path follow in electerm, how it tracks your shell with OSC 633, and when to switch it off.
Turn on "support terminal image" for a bookmark and electerm renders pictures inline — SIXEL, iTerm inline images and Kitty graphics. Where the toggle lives, which commands to try, and what to know about performance.
Electerm triggers watch the terminal output stream and answer for you — auto-paging past --More--, replying yes to confirmations, notifying on sudo prompts. How the three trigger levels work, how matching and send actions behave, and eight presets to start from.
Electerm's built-in MCP Server widget exposes tabs, commands, bookmarks, SFTP and file transfer as Model Context Protocol tools at http://127.0.0.1:30837/mcp - connect Claude, scripts or any MCP client and automate your terminal fleet safely.
A 28px strip above the footer samples CPU, memory, disk, network and uptime over the SSH connection you already have open — and the info panel docks the same machine into the right sidebar. How to turn both on, and how to read the numbers they give you.
theme.electerm.org is a free browser editor for electerm themes — 33 colours, a live preview running the real electerm, AI generation from a sentence, cloud save with GitHub sign-in, and a public board of community themes you can copy in one click.
ai.electerm.org is a free AI service for electerm users — sign in with GitHub for a key you paste into electerm desktop, or use the AI panel in electerm online with no key at all. Plus the shared key pool that keeps it alive when the free tokens run out.
electerm online (cloud.electerm.org) is the electerm you already know, running in a browser — SSH, SFTP, FTP, RDP, VNC, SPICE and Telnet sessions, GitHub sign-in, no install, the same bookmarks and themes on a laptop or a phone.
Two ways to send the same keystrokes to many sessions in electerm — mirror input, which broadcasts everything you type into the active terminal to every other terminal pane, and batch input, where you tick tabs in the footer, press Enter once, and the command lands everywhere you picked.
Select a number in the electerm terminal and a tooltip tells you what moment it is — 9 and 10 digit Unix seconds and 13 digit milliseconds are recognised, and clicking the tooltip copies the formatted date and time.
Tour electerm's AI integration — any OpenAI-compatible model, free ai.electerm.org API, AI command suggestions, explain-selection, AI-generated bookmarks, AI themes, and agent mode that runs tasks in the terminal.
Master SSH in electerm — password and public-key auth, ssh-agent, OpenSSH certificates, MFA keyboard-interactive prompts, connection hopping, NetBird and proxy-command, and local/remote/dynamic SSH tunnels.
Download and install electerm on every major OS — Windows, macOS, Linux (deb, rpm, snap, AppImage, tarball, APT/RPM repos), Android, HarmonyOS and iOS — plus first-run setup, sync and updates.
Electerm is a free, open-source terminal, SSH, SFTP and remote-desktop client for Linux, macOS, Windows, Android, HarmonyOS and iOS. This guide tours its key features.