SFTP GUI

Lightweight dual-pane file manager for SFTP, built with Electron and React.

  

Why?

Most graphical SFTP clients — WinSCP, FileZilla, Cyberduck, MobaXterm — bundle their own SSH implementation. This means:

• You can't enforce your own SSH security policies. If you configure ~/.ssh/config to require post-quantum key exchange algorithms (e.g., mlkem768x25519-sha256), a bundled SSH library won't respect that. Your GUI client silently falls back to weaker defaults.
• You inherit their supply chain. A bundled libssh, libssh2, or PuTTY backend is another dependency you don't control. If a vulnerability is found, you wait for the GUI vendor to patch and release — instead of just updating OpenSSH on your system.
• Your SSH config is ignored. Host aliases, identity files, proxy jumps, and other ~/.ssh/config directives often don't carry over to bundled implementations, forcing you to duplicate configuration.

SFTP GUI takes a different approach: it wraps your system's sftp binary directly via a pseudo-terminal. Your OpenSSH installation handles all cryptography, key exchange, and authentication. The GUI is just a file browser on top.

This means you get OpenSSH 10.0's post-quantum KEX, your ~/.ssh/config settings, your ssh-agent keys, and your known_hosts trust — all automatically, with no extra supply chain dependencies.

Features

• Dual-pane file browser (local left, remote right) with draggable splitter
• Drag-and-drop transfers with progress bars, speed, and ETA
• SSH config and known_hosts parsing with searchable host list
• Host key verification dialog on first connect
• Key-based auth only (via ssh-agent) — no password handling
• Auto-reconnect on unexpected disconnection
• Window size and position remembered across sessions

Prerequisites

• Node.js (LTS)
• pnpm
• Visual Studio Build Tools with the C++ workload and Spectre-mitigated libs (required by node-pty). Install Build Tools first via winget, then add the workload from an admin PowerShell:

  winget install -e --id Microsoft.VisualStudio.BuildTools
  Start-Process -Wait -Verb RunAs -FilePath "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer\vs_installer.exe" -ArgumentList 'install --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.VCTools --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Component.VC.Runtimes.x86.x64.Spectre --includeRecommended --passive'

• OpenSSH with sftp.exe on PATH (included with Windows 10+, or install Win32-OpenSSH)

Build

pnpm install
pnpm build       # Compile to out/
pnpm package     # Package portable .exe to dist/

The portable zip is written to dist/sftp-gui-portable.zip. Extract anywhere and run sftp-gui.exe.

Development

pnpm dev         # Start with hot-reload
pnpm typecheck   # Type-check without emitting

Usage

1. Launch the app and select a host from your SSH config, or enter a hostname and username manually.
2. The app connects using your system's sftp.exe and ssh-agent for key-based authentication.
3. Browse files in the dual-pane view — local files on the left, remote on the right.
4. Drag and drop files between panes to transfer.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Key	Action
F5	Refresh active pane
Backspace	Navigate up one directory
Ctrl+L	Focus path bar as editable input
Tab	Switch active pane

Contributing

This was built as a personal tool to solve a specific need. If you run into any problems or have improvements, feel free to submit a PR and I'll try to review it quickly.

Note: I've only tested on Windows 10 and 11 so far, so there are no guarantees on other operating systems.