SSH File Explorer — PhpStorm plugin

An SSH/SFTP file browser for PhpStorm (and other IntelliJ-based IDEs). Once connected, an SSH Explorer tool window opens on the left side of the IDE so you can browse the remote filesystem and edit any file directly in the editor.

Features

• Multiple saved SSH connections (password or OpenSSH private key)
• Secrets are stored in the IDE PasswordSafe, never written to the settings file
• Lazy-loading remote file tree in the left tool window
• Double click a file → it is downloaded and opened in the editor; saving with Ctrl+S uploads it back to the server automatically
• New file / new folder, rename, delete (folders are deleted recursively)
• Download… and Upload… including whole directories
• Context menu, copy remote path, speed search in the tree

Building

Requires JDK 21. The Gradle wrapper is 9.7.1 and Kotlin is 2.4.20 — PhpStorm 2026.2 ships Kotlin stdlib metadata 2.4, so an older compiler fails with an "incompatible metadata version" error.

./gradlew buildPlugin

Output: build/distributions/ssh-file-explorer-1.0.1.zip

localIdePath in gradle.properties points at the installed PhpStorm (/snap/phpstorm/current). Leave it empty and Gradle downloads PhpStorm 2026.2 from JetBrains instead.

Trying it inside a sandbox IDE

./gradlew runIde

Installing

PhpStorm → Settings → Plugins → ⚙ → Install Plugin from Disk… → pick the zip above, then restart the IDE.

Usage

1. Open the SSH Explorer tab on the left edge.
2. In the toolbar click Connect (▶) → Connections… to add a target.
3. Enter host / port / user name / authentication type, verify with Test Connection, and save.
4. Connect — the tree opens at the configured Root path.
5. Double click a file, edit it, save — the change is pushed to the server.

Notes

• An unknown host key is never accepted silently: the connection is aborted, the fingerprint is shown in a confirmation dialog, and only after you accept it is the key written to ~/.ssh/known_hosts. The same happens when a known key changed, which is what a man-in-the-middle would look like.
• Remote files are mirrored into the IDE system directory: <IDE system dir>/ssh-file-explorer/<connection-id>/<remote path>
• If the connection is gone when you save, the file stays local only and the plugin shows an error notification instead of failing silently.

Verifying before a Marketplace upload

./gradlew verifyPlugin

License

SSH File Explorer — Copyright (C) 2026 Kutay Aydogdu

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

The full license text is in LICENSE; every source file carries an SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0-or-later header.

Bundled third-party code: mwiede/jsch 2.28.7, BSD-3-Clause.