// USER GUIDE

// ADDING A HOST

Tap the + button on the hosts screen to add a new server (on iOS it opens a short menu: choose Add Host).

Required fields

• Hostname / IP — the server address or IP. Both IPv4 and IPv6 are supported.
• Port — defaults to 22. Change it if your server runs SSH on a different port.
• Username — the Unix user you want to log in as (e.g. ubuntu, root, deploy).
• Authentication — choose between password or SSH key (recommended).

Host fingerprint verification

On the first connection SSHBorg shows you the server's fingerprint and asks you to accept it. This is a security check: it ensures you are connecting to the right machine and not to an impostor. You should verify the fingerprint matches the one shown by your server admin or obtained via a trusted channel before accepting.

Once accepted, the fingerprint is stored locally. If it changes on a future connection, SSHBorg will warn you — this could indicate a server rebuild, a key rotation, or a man-in-the-middle attack.

ssh-keygen -lf /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key.pub

// HOST GROUPS

When the server list grows, you can organize hosts into collapsible, color-coded groups — for example Production, Home lab, Clients.

Creating a group

1. Add or edit a host and open the Group dropdown.
2. Choose New group…, type a name and pick one of the predefined colors.
3. Save the host — the host list now shows the group as its own section.

On iOS a group can also be created on its own, from the + button → New group.

Working with groups

• Collapse / expand — tap a group header to fold or reopen it. The state is remembered, even after restarting the app.
• Color — the group color appears as a dot in the header and as the tint of the host icons inside the group.
• Edit — long-press the group header and choose Edit to rename the group or change its color.
• Delete — long-press the header and choose Delete. The hosts in the group are not deleted — they simply become ungrouped.

Colors can be picked from the quick swatches or, on Android, mixed freely with the gradient color picker — on iOS the swatches are the choice. A host can also have its own color — set it in the host editor, right below the group — which overrides the group color and works for ungrouped hosts too.

Hosts without a group stay at the top of the list, and if you never create a group the list looks and behaves exactly as before.

List order

Choose how the list is arranged in Settings → Host list order:

• Alphabetical (default) — groups by name, hosts by label inside each one.
• Recently used — the host you connected to last comes first; hosts never used sit at the bottom.
• Most used — the hosts with the most connections first.
• Manual — the order you set by hand.

In the first three modes the groups stay in alphabetical order, so the section headers never move and only the hosts inside them are rearranged. In manual order the groups can be moved as well.

To rearrange, pick Manual, then open the menu of a host or of a group header — the ⋮ button (… on iOS), a long press, or the Menu key on an Android TV remote — and use Move up / Move down. A host only moves inside its own section: to put it in another group, change the group in the host editor. Switching to manual keeps exactly the order that was on screen at that moment, so nothing jumps, and hosts added later go to the end of their section.

// SFTP FILE MANAGER

The SFTP file manager lets you browse, upload, download, rename, and delete files on your server directly from your phone. Open it from the hosts screen with Files in a host's menu.

Navigation

Tap a folder to open it. Use the back arrow or tap any segment of the path bar to jump up the directory tree. A tap on a file opens what you can do with it: download, open in the editor, rename, delete.

Symbolic links are shown with a small link icon badge. Tapping a symlink navigates to its target: if it points to a directory you enter it, if it points to a file it behaves like a regular file.

Uploading files

Tap the upload button (↑) to pick one or more files from your phone's storage. The upload starts immediately and progress is shown at the top of the screen.

Downloading files and folders

Tap the download icon at the right of a file's row to download it at once. To download an entire folder, tap the download icon next to it — SSHBorg will download the entire directory tree and save it under the Downloads folder on your phone.

If a file already exists at the destination, a dialog will ask you whether to overwrite, skip the file, or cancel the entire transfer.

Multi-select and batch operations

Tap Select items in the toolbar to enter selection mode, then tick the items you want. The toolbar shows actions for the current selection:

• Download — downloads all selected files and folders at once, with a progress dialog and cancellation support.
• Delete — deletes all selected items. Deleting a non-empty folder removes all its contents recursively. There is no undo.

Moving files on the server

Choose Cut in a file's or a folder's menu — or several at once with Select items — then open the destination folder and tap Paste in the bar that appears above the list. The move is done by the server itself: nothing is downloaded and nothing is uploaded, so a file of any size moves instantly.

If the destination already holds that name, SSHBorg asks before touching anything. A file can be replaced or kept alongside the existing one; two folders with the same name can only be kept side by side, because no SFTP server can merge folders — mv refuses as well. Moving between two different disks on the server is also refused: a move is a rename, and a rename cannot cross filesystems. That needs a copy, which SSHBorg does not do yet.

Editing files

Tap a file to open its menu and choose Open in editor to change it directly on the server. Nothing is stored on the phone: the file is read into memory, edited, and written straight back.

The file goes back as it came. Its character encoding is detected and used again when saving, LF or CRLF line endings are preserved, a file that ended without a newline still does, and the permissions stay as they were. If the encoding was read wrong, tap it in the bar at the bottom of the editor and choose another — the list only offers encodings that can reproduce this file's bytes exactly, so a wrong choice can look wrong on screen but cannot damage the file.

Saving writes to a temporary file beside the original and renames it into place, so a connection lost halfway cannot leave a half-written file on the server.

Files open up to 4 MB, whatever their length: only the lines on screen are drawn, so a file of megabytes scrolls like a short one. Above that the terminal is the answer, with nano or vi, and it has no limit at all.

Configuration files are coloured — comments, strings, numbers, keys, section headers, shell variables and XML tags — from the file's name or, when the name says nothing, from the shape of its contents: shell scripts, nginx and sshd style directives, INI, YAML, JSON and XML. Prose, notes and logs are deliberately left plain, where colour would only be noise. Colouring is appearance alone and never changes a byte.

Hex editor

A file that is not text opens in the hex editor: offsets on the left, the bytes in the middle, the printable characters on the right, and a keypad for the hex digits. Tap a byte and type two digits to replace it. Values change but the length never does, so every offset in the file stays where it was. Open in hex in a file's menu opens any file this way, and a text file mistaken for binary — one with a stray NUL byte in it — can still be opened as text from the same dialog.

// SSH KEYS

Key-based authentication is more secure than passwords and does not require you to remember or type anything after setup.

Generating a key

Tap the key icon at the top of the hosts screen to open SSH Keys, then generate a new key. SSHBorg supports:

• Ed25519 — recommended. Fast, compact, and secure.
• ECDSA (P-256 / P-384) — good compatibility with older servers.
• RSA (2048 / 4096 bit) — maximum compatibility, but slower.

Give the key a meaningful name (e.g. my-vps or work-server) so you can identify it later.

Authorizing the key on the server

After generating a key, tap it to see the public key. Copy it and paste it into the server's ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file for the user you want to log in as.

1. On your phone, open SSHBorg → SSH Keys (the key icon on the hosts screen) → tap the key → copy the public key.
2. Log into your server (with a password, or another key you already have).
3. Append the public key to the authorized keys file:

   mkdir -p ~/.ssh
   chmod 700 ~/.ssh
   echo "ssh-ed25519 AAAA...yourcopiedkey..." >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
   chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

4. Try connecting with SSHBorg — it should log in without asking for a password.

Encrypting stored keys and passwords

Turn on Settings → Security → Encrypt sensitive data to store private keys and saved host passwords encrypted with a key held in the device's secure hardware — the Android Keystore, or the Keychain on iOS. It stays off until you enable it; the security tip shown at first launch points to it.

Encrypted data is bound to the device and to this installation of the app: after uninstalling, the stored keys cannot be recovered, and you would generate new ones and authorize them on your servers again. Together with an app lock, this is strongly recommended if you keep sensitive server credentials on your phone.

A key protected by a passphrase asks for it once, when you import it, and is then stored unlocked: the passphrase itself is never written to the device. A passphrase is usually reused somewhere else, while a private key is worth only itself — and a key stored next to its own passphrase would not be protected by it anyway. What protects it here is the app's private storage, Encrypt sensitive data, and the app lock. A key imported by an earlier version was stored still encrypted and cannot authenticate; the key list marks those, and they have to be imported again.

Two encrypted formats the app cannot open: an OpenSSL container (BEGIN ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY) and PuTTY's .ppk. The import says so rather than taking the key half-way. Decrypt it with the tool that created it and import it again — working on a copy, never on your only file:

ssh-keygen -p -N "" -f id_ed25519_copy
openssl pkcs8 -in key.pem -out key_plain.pem

PuTTYgen converts a .ppk from Conversions → Export OpenSSH key.

// COMMAND SUGGESTIONS

SSHBorg shows a suggestion bar above the keyboard while you type in the terminal. Suggestions are drawn from the shell history of the user you connected as.

How it works

When a terminal session opens, SSHBorg reads the shell history file from the remote server. It tries the following locations in order:

1. ~/.bash_history — default for Bash shells
2. ~/.zsh_history — default for Zsh (also checked as $HISTFILE if set)
3. ~/.local/share/fish/fish_history — for Fish shell users

The first file that exists and is readable is used. As you type, commands are filtered in real time and shown as chips in the suggestion bar. Tap a chip to insert the command.

Troubleshooting

No suggestions appear

• The history file may not exist yet (first login, or shell not configured to save history).
• Make sure your shell is configured to write history. For Bash, add to ~/.bashrc:

  HISTFILE=~/.bash_history
  HISTSIZE=10000
  HISTFILESIZE=20000

• For Zsh, add to ~/.zshrc:

  HISTFILE=~/.zsh_history
  HISTSIZE=10000
  SAVEHIST=10000
  setopt APPEND_HISTORY SHARE_HISTORY

Suggestions are from the wrong user

// TERMINAL GESTURES

The terminal responds to a few touch gestures beyond typing:

• Scroll history — swipe up or down to browse the terminal's scrollback buffer.
• Zoom — pinch to increase or decrease the text size.
• Copy text — long-press anywhere on the terminal to enter selection mode. Drag the handles to adjust the selected area, then tap Copy selection to copy only the highlighted text, or Copy all to copy the entire output. Tap anywhere else to cancel. On iOS a long press selects the word under your finger and opens the system menu with Copy, Paste and Select All; drag from either end of the selection to extend it.
• Paste — use the Paste button in the extra-key bar (visible when the keyboard is open).

Full-screen apps. Programs that take over the whole screen — tmux, vim, nano, less — have no scrollback of their own, so while one is running the view stays on the live screen instead of drifting into the shell output underneath it.

To scroll inside them, the application has to handle the scrolling itself. In tmux, add set -g mouse on to ~/.tmux.conf: a swipe then scrolls the history of the pane under your finger. The same goes for any program that accepts mouse input, such as vim with set mouse=a. With screen, check that altscreen on is set in ~/.screenrc — on many systems it is off by default, and screen then draws over the ordinary scrollback.

// TERMINAL SETTINGS

Under Settings → Terminal you can adapt the terminal to your needs:

• Terminal colors — the classic dark scheme (white on black), a light scheme (black on white) that is easier to read in bright daylight, or match app theme, which switches automatically together with the app theme. The change applies immediately, including to sessions that are already open.
• Keep screen on — prevents the display from turning off while a terminal is open. Handy when watching logs or long-running commands. Off by default.
• Default font size — the text size new terminal sessions start with; you can still pinch-zoom each session individually.
• Scrollback, inverted scrolling and command suggestions — control how much output history is kept, the scroll direction, and the suggestion bar described above.
• Double-tap action — optionally make a double-tap on the terminal send Tab (auto-complete), or two Tabs (list all candidates). Off by default; on iOS, while it is off, a double-tap selects a word.

// EXTRA KEY BAR

When the soft keyboard is open, a row of shortcut buttons appears above it. Scroll the bar sideways to reach all the keys.

Modifier keys

Ctrl and Alt are sticky toggles — tap one, then tap a letter key to send the combination. They reset automatically after the next keystroke.

• Ctrl+C — interrupt the running process.
• Ctrl+D — send EOF / close the shell.
• Ctrl+Z — suspend the process.
• Ctrl+L — clear the screen.

Word mode

The spellcheck icon toggles the keyboard between terminal mode and word mode. In terminal mode (default) autocorrect and word suggestions are disabled — ideal for commands and file paths. In word mode the keyboard behaves like a normal text field, with suggestions and autocorrect enabled. Useful when typing natural language over SSH, for example with Claude Code or other interactive tools.

On Android, word mode is also what makes voice typing work. The keyboard's microphone key needs a real text field to write into, so dictation produces nothing in terminal mode — switch to word mode before dictating.

Navigation and editing

• ESC — Escape key.
• Tab — shell autocomplete.
• ↑ ↓ ← → — cursor arrow keys.
• Home / End — jump to the beginning or end of the line.
• PgUp / PgDn — page up / page down.
• Del — forward delete (character to the right of the cursor).
• Paste — paste the clipboard into the terminal.

Function keys

Scroll the bar to the right to reach F1 through F12.

Layouts and custom bars

The bar comes in several layouts. Tap the ⇄ key on the bar to switch: the keys make room for the list of available bars, tap one and you are done — the choice is remembered. You can also pick and manage bars in Settings → Terminal → Extra key bar → Customise.

• Standard — the classic single scrolling row.
• Natural — one row ordered by frequency of use, with / - | ~ and the arrows in keyboard order (← ↑ ↓ →).
• Natural ×2 — two rows that fill the width: ESC / - Home ↑ End PgUp over Tab Ctrl Alt ← ↓ → PgDn.
• Natural ×3 — the same plus a third row with the function keys.
• Minimal — just ESC, Tab, Ctrl and the arrows, for narrow screens.

To build your own, duplicate a preset (the ⋮ menu next to it, or a long press on iOS) or create a new bar. The editor shows the bar exactly as it will look: tap a key to select it, then use the buttons below to move it left or right, to another row, change it, add a key after it or remove it. Each row can either scroll (keys keep their natural width) or fill the screen width (up to about nine keys per row on a phone). Up to three rows; the key size is adjustable.

Besides the usual keys, a custom bar can hold text keys: any text, sent as typed — a single |, a sudo prefix, or a whole command. Use \n for Enter, \t for Tab and \e for Escape, so ls -la\n becomes a one-tap macro. Two more action keys are available: pin keeps the bar visible with the keyboard closed, keyboard shows or hides the keyboard.

Custom bars are included in the settings backup. On Android TV everything works with the remote: the editor's keys and buttons are all reachable with the D-pad.

// AGENT FORWARDING

SSH agent forwarding lets the keys stored in SSHBorg be used to authenticate further connections made from inside the remote server — for example, to git clone a private repo, or to hop to a second machine.

Enabling forwarding in SSHBorg

When adding or editing a host, enable the Agent forwarding toggle. SSHBorg will act as an SSH agent for that session.

Server-side configuration

The server must allow agent forwarding. Check /etc/ssh/sshd_config:

AllowAgentForwarding yes

This is the default on most systems. After changing it, restart the SSH daemon:

sudo systemctl restart sshd

Per-host client configuration (optional)

If you also connect to this server from a laptop or desktop, you can configure forwarding persistently in your local ~/.ssh/config:

Host myserver
    HostName 203.0.113.42
    User ubuntu
    ForwardAgent yes

// LEGACY CIPHER SUPPORT

Some older servers — network appliances, embedded devices, or systems running outdated OpenSSH versions — only support cipher algorithms that modern SSH clients no longer advertise by default.

When you enable the Allow Legacy Ciphers toggle in the host settings, SSHBorg appends the following additional algorithms to the negotiation list:

Added algorithms

• Ciphers: aes128-cbc, aes192-cbc, aes256-cbc, 3des-cbc
• Key exchange: diffie-hellman-group14-sha1, diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1, diffie-hellman-group1-sha1
• Host key type: ssh-dss (DSA 1024-bit)

The server always negotiates the strongest algorithm both sides support, so enabling this option does not weaken connections to modern servers — the legacy algorithms are only used when the server cannot offer anything better.

// CONNECTION DROPS & TERMINAL MULTIPLEXERS

SSH is a live TCP connection between your phone and the server. If the connection is interrupted — even for a second — the session and everything running inside it is lost.

Why connections drop on mobile

Mobile networks are particularly prone to connection drops for several reasons:

• IP address changes — when travelling or switching between cell towers, your carrier may assign you a new public IP. Since TCP connections are tied to the IP address, the existing SSH session becomes invalid immediately.
• Wi-Fi ↔ mobile handover — switching between a Wi-Fi network and mobile data (or vice versa) changes your IP and breaks any open TCP connection.
• Idle timeouts — carriers and NAT routers often drop idle connections after a few minutes. Long-running but silent sessions (watching logs, waiting for input) are vulnerable to this.
• Signal loss — tunnels, underground car parks, or simply a weak signal can briefly drop the network, which is enough to kill a session.
• Android background limits — while a session is open SSHBorg keeps a foreground service running, with its own notification, so Android does not stop your sessions on a timer: one left open goes on working while you use other apps. What can still end it is the phone reclaiming memory, or the battery saving that some manufacturers apply to background apps — if your sessions stop on their own, excluding SSHBorg from battery optimisation is the first thing to try. Reopening the app lets you connect again.
• iOS suspends apps in the background — about thirty seconds after SSHBorg leaves the screen, iOS suspends it and its connections drop. When you come back, SSHBorg reconnects by itself (asking for the password only if none is saved) and marks the spot in the output: it is a new shell, and whatever was running in the old one is gone. On iOS a multiplexer is the only way to keep work running while you use another app.

The solution: tmux or screen

A terminal multiplexer runs a persistent session on the server, completely independent of your SSH connection. If the connection drops, the session and everything running inside it keeps going. When you reconnect, you re-attach and find everything exactly as you left it.

This is the single most useful habit for anyone managing servers from a phone.

Quick start with tmux

tmux is available on most modern Linux distributions and is the recommended choice.

# Start a new named session
tmux new -s work

# Detach from the session (leave it running)
Ctrl+B, then D

# List running sessions
tmux ls

# Re-attach to a session
tmux attach -t work

# Re-attach to the most recent session
tmux attach

Quick start with screen

screen is older but available on virtually every Unix system, including minimal server images where tmux may not be installed.

# Start a new named session
screen -S work

# Detach from the session
Ctrl+A, then D

# List running sessions
screen -ls

# Re-attach to a session
screen -r work

Recommended workflow on mobile

1. Connect to the server with SSHBorg.
2. Start or re-attach a tmux/screen session immediately: tmux attach || tmux new -s main
3. Run your commands inside the multiplexer.
4. If the connection drops, just reconnect — your session is still there.

// JUMP HOSTS

A jump host (also called a bastion host) is an intermediate server you must pass through to reach a target server that is not directly accessible from the internet. SSHBorg supports single and multi-hop jump chains natively.

Configuring a jump host in SSHBorg

1. Add the bastion server as a regular host in SSHBorg (e.g. bastion).
2. Add the target server as another host.
3. In the target host settings, set Jump host to the bastion host you created.
4. Enable Agent forwarding on the bastion entry — this allows your key to be forwarded through the bastion to authenticate on the target.

Multi-hop chains

If you need to jump through more than one intermediate server (e.g. internet → bastion → dmz → target), create an entry for each hop and chain them:

• bastion — no jump host, agent forwarding on
• dmz — jump host = bastion, agent forwarding on
• target — jump host = dmz

Equivalent manual configuration (for reference)

The equivalent setup in a desktop ~/.ssh/config looks like this:

Host bastion
    HostName bastion.example.com
    User admin
    ForwardAgent yes

Host target
    HostName 10.0.1.50
    User ubuntu
    ProxyJump bastion
    ForwardAgent yes

With this config, ssh target on your laptop transparently jumps through the bastion.

Firewall requirements

• Your phone must be able to reach the bastion on its SSH port (usually 22).
• The bastion must be able to reach the target on its SSH port.
• The target does not need to be reachable directly from your phone.

// MULTIPLE SESSIONS

SSHBorg lets you keep several SSH terminal sessions and SFTP file manager sessions open at the same time, even to different servers.

• Tap a host to open a terminal, or choose Files in its menu to open the file manager. On a host that already has sessions open, the same menu opens further ones.
• Switch between open sessions with the tabs below the terminal; a host with several sessions opens a numbered picker.
• Sessions stay alive in the background as long as the network connection holds — on iOS only for a short while, see Connection Drops.
• The host list shows a small badge next to each host with the number of active SSH and SFTP sessions, so you can see at a glance what is open.

// APP SECURITY

App lock

Choose how the app is protected in Settings → Security → App lock: None (default), Biometric only (fingerprint or face unlock), Device lock (the device PIN, pattern, or password, alongside biometrics), or an in-app PIN or passphrase. When a lock is active, SSHBorg requires authentication before showing any host, credential, or session data. If authentication is refused, or you cancel it, the app stays on its own lock screen with a button to try again — it does not close, so the sessions you had open are still there when you unlock.

The in-app PIN or passphrase works on any device, even without biometric hardware or a system screen lock — which makes it the right choice on an Android TV. Changing or removing it asks for the current one first. There is no way to recover it if forgotten: you would have to clear the app's data or reinstall, so keep a backup of your hosts.

You can set an inactivity timeout — after that long in the background the app locks automatically.

Screenshot protection

By default SSHBorg blocks screenshots and screen recording to prevent sensitive terminal content from leaking via the recent-apps screen or screen capture tools.

If you need to take a screenshot (e.g. to share a terminal output), you can temporarily disable screenshot protection in Settings → Security → Allow screenshots.

Credential storage

With Encrypt sensitive data turned on (see SSH Keys), passwords and private keys are stored encrypted with a key held in the Android Keystore — hardware-backed on Android 10+ — or, on iOS, in the Keychain, restricted to this device. Credentials are never written to external storage or transmitted anywhere.

The strongest setup

Each piece above is useful on its own. Together they are as tight as the app gets, and it takes a couple of minutes:

1. Turn on Settings → Security → Encrypt sensitive data.
2. Set the app lock to Biometric only — or to PIN or passphrase if you would rather not rely on the phone's biometrics.
3. Set the lock timeout to Immediately, or at most 30 seconds.
4. Generate a new key in the app, with a name that tells you which device it is.
5. Authorize that key on your servers, and use it instead of a password.

A key generated on the phone has never existed anywhere else: there is no older copy of it that might already have leaked, and nothing to clean up on another machine. One key per device also means that losing the phone costs you one line in authorized_keys — remove it and your other devices keep working, which is why the name is worth choosing well.

What none of this can do: if the phone itself is compromised, that key is compromised with it, whatever protects it on disk. A passphrase on the key would not save it either — anything able to read the app's storage can also read what you type. That is why SSHBorg asks for a key's passphrase once, when importing it, and stores the key unlocked instead of keeping the passphrase (see SSH Keys).

// CONFIGURATION BACKUP

SSHBorg can export and import host configurations and app settings as a JSON file. This lets you transfer your server list to another device or keep a portable backup of your setup.

Exporting

Go to Settings → Backup → Export backup. Choose where to save the file using the system file picker. The file is named sshborg_backup.json by default (sshborg-backup-date.json on iOS).

Importing

Go to Settings → Backup → Import backup. Select the .json file you previously exported (or created manually). SSHBorg merges it with the existing host list:

• Hosts whose label matches an existing entry are updated.
• Hosts with a new label are added.
• Hosts not present in the file are left unchanged.
• An updated host keeps its saved password, key and accepted host key — the backup never carries them.
• A host with no key is linked to a key whose name matches the exported keyLabel, if one exists; otherwise the field is ignored.
• An updated host keeps the usage data this device already has — last connection, counter and manual position; the file only fills in what is missing.

JSON format

The export file is a plain JSON object. You can also create it by hand to bulk-import a server list from another source.

{
  "version": 7,
  "exported_at": "2026-05-14T10:00:00Z",
  "groups": [
    { "name": "Production", "color": -1754827, "position": 0 }
  ],
  "hosts": [
    {
      "label":           "My VPS",
      "hostname":        "203.0.113.42",
      "port":            22,
      "username":        "ubuntu",
      "agentForwarding": false,
      "jumpMode":        "simple",
      "jumpHosts":       null,
      "jumpHostIdList":  null,
      "portForwardings": null,
      "sftpStartMode":   "last",
      "sftpStartDir":    null,
      "sftpShowHidden":  false,
      "allowLegacyCiphers": false,
      "position":        0,
      "lastConnected":   1757404800000,
      "connectCount":    12,
      "keyLabel":         "My VPS key",
      "group":           "Production"
    }
  ],
  "settings": {
    "night_mode":            0,
    "scrollback_lines":      2000,
    "terminal_font_size":    13,
    "terminal_color_scheme": 0,
    "double_tap_action":     0
  }
}

The optional settings object holds your app preferences and is written automatically on export; you can leave it out when creating the file by hand.

Field reference

• label — display name shown in SSHBorg. Used as the unique key for merging on import. Required.
• hostname — server address or IP (IPv4 or IPv6). Required.
• port — SSH port. Defaults to 22.
• username — login user. Required.
• agentForwarding — true to enable SSH agent forwarding. Defaults to false.
• jumpMode — "simple" (use the jumpHosts text) or "host_list" (use SSHBorg internal host IDs). Use "simple" when creating the file manually.
• jumpHosts — comma-separated jump hosts in [user@]host[:port] format. Only used when jumpMode is "simple".
• portForwardings — newline-separated local port-forwarding rules in SSH -L syntax, e.g. "8080:localhost:8080".
• sftpStartMode — SFTP starting directory: "last" (remember last visited), "fixed" (always use sftpStartDir), "home" (server home). Defaults to "last".
• sftpStartDir — path to use when sftpStartMode is "fixed".
• sftpShowHidden — true to show hidden files (dotfiles, names starting with ".") in the SFTP browser for this host. Defaults to false.
• allowLegacyCiphers — true to enable the legacy cipher algorithms described above. Defaults to false.
• keyLabel — name of the SSH key this host uses. On import, if a key with this name exists it is linked to the host; otherwise the field is ignored. The key itself is never included in the backup.
• group — name of the group the host belongs to. Groups are listed in the top-level groups array with their name and color (ARGB as a signed 32-bit integer). If a host references a group that is not in the array, it is created automatically with a default color — so you can omit the array entirely when writing the file by hand.
• color — optional per-host color (ARGB as a signed 32-bit integer). It overrides the group color.
• position — place of the host in the manual list order, counted inside its own section (the ungrouped block, or one group). Omit it and the host is appended at the end. Groups carry a position of their own in the groups array.
• lastConnected — time of the last connection, in milliseconds since the Unix epoch. Feeds the "recently used" order.
• connectCount — how many terminal sessions were opened to this host. Feeds the "most used" order.

// ANDROID TV

SSHBorg runs on Android TV and Google TV. It works with the remote's D-pad, but because it is a text-heavy app, a physical keyboard makes a real difference.

Navigating with the remote

• D-pad arrows — move the focus between rows and controls.
• OK (center) — the primary action: connect to a host, open a folder, download a file, expand a group.
• Back — go up a level or leave the screen.

Opening a row's menu

To rename, delete, edit, duplicate or download from a row, open its menu: press the remote's Menu (options) key on the focused row, or hold OK (long-press). OK by itself runs the primary action, not the menu.

Typing: use a physical keyboard

A physical keyboard — USB or Bluetooth (Android TV supports both) is strongly recommended, and effectively required for the terminal. With one, text fields and the shell behave normally.

Without one, the on-screen keyboard still handles short entries: focus a field, press OK to open it, type, and press the keyboard's OK / Go to confirm — on the password prompt this connects directly. Entering shell commands with the on-screen keyboard, however, is impractical.

Locking the app on a TV

A TV usually has no fingerprint reader or screen lock, so protect the app with the built-in PIN or passphrase lock (Settings → Security) — it works entirely with the remote or a keyboard. See App Security.

// OPEN SOURCE LICENSES

SSHBorg is free software, released under the GNU General Public License v3. Its source code is on GitHub, for both the Android and the iOS app. It uses the following libraries, each under its own licence:

• mwiede/JSch — the SSH protocol on Android — BSD-style licence
• Bouncy Castle — cryptography on Android — MIT-style licence
• sora-editor — the text editor widget for editing files on the server, on Android — GNU LGPL v2.1
• libssh2 — the SSH protocol on iOS — BSD licence

None of them connects to anything on its own: the only addresses SSHBorg contacts are the servers you tell it about, and sshborg.com when you tap a link. There are no analytics libraries, no advertising libraries and no trackers of any kind.