LinuxSCP

A commander-style SFTP client for GNOME — a WinSCP for Linux.

Free and open source. Built for people switching from Windows to Linux.

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LinuxSCP is a native GTK4 / libadwaita SFTP client with a dual-pane, keyboard-driven "commander" layout. It works directly with your ~/.ssh/config — the same aliases, jump hosts, keys, and agents you already use on the command line — because it drives the system OpenSSH binary under the hood. It also handles sudo / su - elevation so you can manage root-owned files, and every transfer is resumable.

Install

No GitHub account or command line needed on Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pop!_OS and other Debian-based distributions:

1. Download the package for your computer: x86-64 (most desktops and laptops) or ARM64 (Raspberry Pi and ARM laptops). Not sure? It's almost certainly x86-64.

2. Open the downloaded .deb file — double-clicking it in your file manager opens the software installer; click Install. Or from a terminal:

   sudo apt install ~/Downloads/linuxscp_amd64.deb

3. Launch LinuxSCP from your applications menu. Updates arrive the same way: download the new .deb and install it over the old one.

The packages work on Debian 13 "Trixie", Ubuntu 24.04 LTS and newer (anything with GTK4 ≥ 4.12 and libadwaita ≥ 1.5). Every release also carries SHA-256 checksums on the releases page.

On other distributions, install the Flatpak or build from source.

Features

• Dual-pane commander UI — local on one side, remote on the other, Tab to switch, and a .. row at the top of each pane to go up a directory.
• Tabbed sessions — open as many connections as you like, WinSCP-style: each tab is a full dual-pane session, and the "New Session" button next to the tabs spawns the next one.
• Site manager with folders — organize saved connections in a nested folder tree (WinSCP-style), created and edited entirely in-app: ~/.ssh/config hosts on the left, saved sites in the middle, and the selected site's details edited inline on the right, with a new site appearing in the list as you type its name. A search box filters the folder tree, the saved sites, and the ~/.ssh/config hosts together; sites and whole folders can be dragged between folders. Set the username, override the port, choose password or PEM-key authentication, pick the elevation mode and a landing directory per site. Passwords and key passphrases are stored in the OS keyring (Secret Service / gnome-keyring), never in plain text.
• Zero-config connections too — still reads ~/.ssh/config (aliases, ProxyJump, ControlMaster, IdentityFile, agent and FIDO/hardware keys) by using your real ssh — and the config file itself can be edited right inside the site manager.
• Root file management — connect and elevate with sudo or su -, WinSCP-style, without changing anything in sshd_config.
• Robust transfers — a queue with live progress, speed and ETA; pause, resume and cancel; recursive directory copies; conflict prompts (overwrite / resume / skip). Scanning and copying run in parallel and several files are in flight at once, so large trees start transferring immediately and folders full of small files aren't bottlenecked by per-file round trips.
• Resume across disconnects — interrupted files are staged as .filepart and continued from their offset on the next try.
• Full file management — create folders, rename, delete (recursive), new symlinks, and a right-click context menu with clipboard copy / cut / paste ("Copy to…" and "Move to…" included). A WinSCP-style Properties dialog shows size and disk usage and edits permissions, owner and group — recursively when asked. Remote owners are shown by name, and drag and drop works between panes.
• Transfer notifications — when a transfer finishes, LinuxSCP plays a success chime and posts a GNOME desktop notification. Both are independently toggleable in Preferences.
• Quality of life — splash screen, "open terminal here" (local shell or ssh into the host), reconnect on drop, and remembered preferences.

Authentication and saved sites

Open the Site Manager (the server button in either pane's header, or automatically at launch). From there you can:

• Build a folder tree and drop sites into it; folders nest arbitrarily, and both sites and whole folders can be dragged to reorganize (the Delete key removes whatever is selected).
• Create a site with an explicit host, port, and username — it appears in the site list immediately and is edited in the details panel on the right, WinSCP-style.
• Search across everything at once: saved sites, folders, and ~/.ssh/config hosts.
• Edit ~/.ssh/config in-app; the host list reloads on save.
• Choose how to authenticate:
  • SSH agent / default keys — defer to your agent and ~/.ssh/config (the default).
  • Password — typed each time, or saved to the keyring and auto-filled.
  • Key file (PEM) — pick a private key; an optional passphrase can be saved too.
• Set a per-site elevation mode (sudo / su -) and a remote directory to open in.

Secrets live in the OS keyring keyed by an opaque site id; settings.json only records whether a secret exists, never its value.

Keyboard shortcuts

Key	Action	Key	Action
Tab	Switch active pane	F5	Copy to other pane
Enter	Open directory	F6	Move to other pane
Backspace	Parent directory	F7	New directory
F2	Rename	F8 / Del	Delete
F9	Properties (permissions, owner, group)	Ctrl+H	Toggle hidden files
Ctrl+C / Ctrl+X	Copy / cut selection	Ctrl+V	Paste
Ctrl+R	Refresh	Ctrl+L	Edit path
Ctrl+T	Open terminal here	Right click	Context menu

How it works

LinuxSCP does not reimplement SSH. Instead it spawns your system ssh and speaks the SFTP protocol over its pipes:

• Normal connections run ssh -s <host> sftp — the SFTP subsystem, exactly like the sftp command.
• Elevated connections allocate a remote PTY, drive the sudo/su password prompt, put the PTY into raw mode, and then exec sftp-server. From that point the PTY carries the binary SFTP protocol as root.
• Prompts (passwords, key passphrases, host-key confirmations) are routed from OpenSSH back into GTK dialogs through a small SSH_ASKPASS helper and a private unix socket.

flowchart LR
    UI["GTK4 UI (main thread)"] <--> Session["Session actors (tokio)"]
    Session --> Sftp["russh-sftp client"]
    Sftp --> Ssh["ssh (system OpenSSH)"]
    Ssh --> Askpass["linuxscp-askpass"]
    Askpass --> UI

Loading

Building from source

You need a Rust toolchain and the GTK4 / libadwaita development packages.

# Debian / Ubuntu
sudo apt install libgtk-4-dev libadwaita-1-dev build-essential

# Fedora
sudo dnf install gtk4-devel libadwaita-devel

# Arch
sudo pacman -S gtk4 libadwaita

# Then build the app and askpass helper, then run
cargo build --workspace
cargo run -p linuxscp

Install system-wide (binary, desktop file, icon, metainfo):

sudo make install

Building a .deb yourself

The prebuilt packages in the Install section are built on Ubuntu 24.04 by CI. To build one locally from a release build (no debhelper needed, just dpkg-deb):

make deb            # or: ./scripts/build-deb.sh

This produces target/deb/linuxscp_<version>_<arch>.deb with the binaries, the desktop entry, AppStream metainfo, and the app icon rendered at every hicolor size (16–512 px). Library dependencies are computed automatically with dpkg-shlibdeps, and openssh-client is added since LinuxSCP drives the system ssh. Install it with:

sudo apt install ./target/deb/linuxscp_*_amd64.deb   # resolves dependencies
# or
sudo dpkg -i ./target/deb/linuxscp_*_amd64.deb

The package's postinst refreshes the icon cache and desktop database, so the penguin icon and "LinuxSCP" launcher show up in the app grid immediately.

Flatpak

flatpak-builder --user --install build build-aux/io.github.theflyingjay.LinuxSCP.json

The Flatpak reaches the host's ssh, keys and agent via the host portal, so your ~/.ssh/config continues to work inside the sandbox.

The build runs offline: build-aux/cargo-sources.json pins every crate from Cargo.lock so flatpak-builder can fetch them up front. After changing dependencies, run make flatpak-sources to regenerate it — CI fails if it's stale.

Development & testing

Unit tests run anywhere. The end-to-end SFTP tests use a throwaway local sshd:

cargo test                                          # unit tests
./scripts/test-server.sh start                      # local sshd on 127.0.0.1:2299
cargo test -p linuxscp --test sftp_roundtrip -- --ignored
./scripts/test-server.sh stop

scripts/test-server.sh run starts the test server and launches the app pointed at it (host alias testbox; the fake su password is secret123).

Contributing

Pull requests are welcome. main only accepts changes through a pull request with a green CI run, and CI is strict, so run the same checks locally before pushing:

cargo fmt --all
cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings
cargo test --all-targets

cargo test --lib alone does not compile the integration tests under linuxscp/tests/, so signature changes are easy to miss without --all-targets. Changes to Cargo.lock, linuxscp/src/ssh/, or the CI and release workflows get extra scrutiny; please explain them in the PR description.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later. See LICENSE. Free for everyone, forever.