SSH Lite (SSH Tools) — Lightweight SSH Suite for VS Code

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Active development. Please report issues on GitHub.

A visual SSH client for VS Code. Browse files, edit in your editor, manage services, view processes, edit cron, forward ports — by clicking, not by typing vi / systemctl / crontab -e / ps aux | grep. Runs entirely over plain SSH/SFTP with nothing installed on the remote server. Perfect for VPS, small VMs, shared hosting, and resource-constrained Linux boxes.

SSH Lite Overview

Why SSH Lite?

Three ways to drive a Linux box from VS Code — pick the one that fits your VPS.

	SSH Lite	Raw SSH (terminal + vi)	Remote-SSH
Interaction	Visual — click to browse, edit, monitor	Type every command	Full IDE feel
Remote install	None	None	~200MB+
Edit files	In VS Code	`vi` / `nano`	In VS Code
Terminal at any folder	1-click — then do whatever in raw shell	login, then `cd /path/...`	open terminal + `cd`
Tiny VMs (512MB RAM)	✓	✓	Often fails
Multiple connections	✓ many in one window	Multiple terminals	1 per window
Server resource usage	Zero	Zero	High

SSH Lite sits in the middle: as light as raw SSH, as friendly as Remote-SSH.

Features

📖 Full feature reference → - every feature, with what you click vs. what you would otherwise type. Highlights:

Filter files/folders _{gray out non-matches, no find . -name}	Multi-server search _{one webview, not per-host grep -r}
	Server monitor _{CPU / memory / disk + top processes}
The pixel coder _{reacts to your typing and your AI}	Side-by-side diff of changes _{review edits, no scp then diff}

Also: file browser · terminals · cron editor · port forwarding · process viewer · service manager · env inspector · snippets · batch runner · key gen + push · auto-backup + restore · sudo fallback · copy / paste across hosts · activity + audit · pinned folders

Quick Start

Install — search "SSH Lite" in Extensions, or code --install-extension hybr8.ssh-lite
Click + in the SSH Lite sidebar, add a host
Click the host to connect — credentials are saved automatically

Reads ~/.ssh/config. Supports SSH keys (RSA / Ed25519 / ECDSA, encrypted), agent, and password.

117 commands — full reference at docs/COMMANDS.md.

Remote-SSH compatibility

SSH Lite always runs on your local machine — Windows, macOS, or Linux — even when VS Code is connected to a remote workspace via the built-in Remote-SSH extension. When you install SSH Lite from the Marketplace inside a Remote-SSH session, you will see the Install in Local button on the extension page — click it. SSH Lite then connects to remote servers directly from your local machine and downloads files to your local home directory:

Windows: C:\Users\<you>\...
macOS: /Users/<you>/...
Linux: /home/<you>/...

Side-by-side use works without surprises: keep your Remote-SSH editing session on remote server A, and use SSH Lite to browse, download from, terminal into, and port-forward from any number of other servers B, C, D — all from your own machine. File browsing, editing, terminals, port forwards, search, snippets, cron, diffs, and the rest of the SSH Tools suite all operate over SSH Lite's own SSH/SFTP connections, independent of where the VS Code workspace lives or which OS you run VS Code on.

One edge case worth knowing:

Port forwards bind to your local machine. A process running inside the Remote-SSH workspace (e.g. curl in the Remote-SSH terminal) cannot reach the forwarded port. Use VS Code's built-in Remote-SSH port forwarding for that direction.

Because SSH Lite always runs on your local machine, VS Code never runs it on the remote server itself — so your saved hosts and Add Host always work in any window, and there is no "wrong host" pitfall. (To reach a server from another server, open a normal local VS Code window and let SSH Lite connect to it directly.)

Release Notes

1.0.6 - Fix: SSH Lite no longer gets stuck on “Activating” in a Remote-SSH window. A user reproduced this with Ubuntu locally and Linux remotely, but the same remote-path mistake could affect local Windows, macOS, or Linux clients. The audit log previously treated the remote workspace path as a local folder, so activation could stop before saved hosts were loaded. Remote and other virtual workspaces now store the default audit log in the local ~/.ssh-lite/audit.json; normal local workspaces still use .vscode/ssh-lite-audit.json, and a custom Audit Log Path still takes priority. Saved hosts were never deleted.

1.0.5 - Fix: your saved hosts now always appear inside a Remote-SSH window. If you used VS Code's built-in Remote-SSH to open a server and then opened SSH Lite there, it could show an empty host list and refuse to add hosts - even though your normal local VS Code worked fine. The cause: SSH Lite could end up running on the remote server instead of on your own machine, and from the server it cannot see the host list that lives on your machine. SSH Lite now always runs on your local machine in every window (inside a Remote-SSH session you will see "Install in Local" on the extension page), so the host list and Add Host work everywhere. If you were affected, just update - VS Code moves SSH Lite back to your machine automatically and your saved hosts were never lost. (Trade-off: running SSH Lite's interface from a remote server to a third machine - "chained SSH" - is no longer supported; open a local window and connect directly instead.)

Full changelog

License

Apache-2.0

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SSH Lite (SSH Tools)

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