NEO SSH-Win Manager logoNEO SSH-Win Manager
GitHub
Changelog

What's changed.

All published releases — straight from GitHub. Full commit history on GitHub history.

v1.7.0 github.com/releases/v1.7.0
  • Start right away, no account to set up. A new installation signs you in automatically (single-user mode). Its password is a random one, kept in Windows Credential Manager and protected by your Windows sign-in.
  • If several people use the computer, or you would rather sign in with a password, create an account under User Management → "Application login mode". Your connections and settings stay as they are.
  • An installation with one account can switch to single-user mode in the same place. The account is then renamed to "default".
  • Installations that sign in with a password keep doing so after the update. If Windows Credential Manager is not available, the app asks you to create an account as before.
  • Find any connection as you type. The magnifier above the connection list, or Ctrl+F, opens a filter field. It looks at the name, the host and the user name, several words narrow the list further, and you see how many connections match. What you type stays there, across restarts too, until you clear it with the × in the field.
  • A redesigned login screen. A cleaner layout with icons in the fields, a button to show the password you are typing, a warning when Caps Lock is on, and error messages in a clearly visible box.
  • A language menu at the top right switches the login screen at once. The language you pick there becomes your language in the app.
  • The login screen uses the theme, the accent colour and the language of the user who signed in last.
  • Black replaces Dark. A classic dark mode in plain black and gray, without the blue tint. If you used Dark, you now have Black. The previous blue look is still there as "Blue (classic)", in the settings and in the installer.
  • Free and open source, with everything. The Pro licence is gone for good. The app no longer contains a licence check and no longer contacts the licence server.
  • Tips in the empty overview. Where "Ready for the next step" used to stand, you now get a tip ("Did you know?"): 60 short notes on features, shortcuts and settings, and a few jokes, in all six languages. You only see tips that fit your setup, a new one each time the overview comes back, and "Next tip" shows another one.
  • Help right in the connection form. A ? at the top of the form and beside every field opens the online documentation at the explanation of that field. Below the remote path, a tip says that it is usually your home directory on the server and that the command pwd shows it after an SSH login.
  • Choose the text colour on your accent colour. The accent colour picker has a new row for the text on accent-coloured buttons: automatic, white, black or a colour of your own, with a sample. The automatic choice is better too: bright accents such as orange, a vivid green or cyan now get dark text, while blue, violet, red or pink keep white text.
  • A network of linked nodes in the background of the empty overview, a connection's details, User Management, your profile and the login screen. Every page, and every connection, has a pattern of its own, and the text stays easy to read. You can switch it off under Settings → Appearance.
  • The whole interface follows your language. Some texts stayed in German or English whatever language you had chosen: the tooltips of the window buttons, "Cancel" when you rename or create a file in the file browser, the buttons of some confirmations, "Copy details" after an unexpected error, the error prefix in the status bar and the number of CPU cores in the system info. They are now translated.
  • Confirmations that delete something are red in every language. Deleting a connection, user or template, deleting files on the server and clearing the CLI history showed the red confirm button only in English and German.
  • A tidier header and title bar. The buttons above the connection list sit in the middle of their bar, and the "… active · … mounted" badge is no longer cut off. The header bar runs on across the gap between the connection list and the right panel, and in every theme the title bar takes the darker tone of the sidebar.
  • A friendlier check interval field. In the settings, the check interval sits between two round buttons, − and +. Holding a button keeps counting, and the number can still be typed.
  • The login window appears a little sooner. The main window is now loaded after you have signed in.
  • In single-user mode, the profile button is hidden, because there is no password to change. It comes back when you create an account.
  • No more small windows flashing up after the login. While the main window was being built, a small empty window appeared and vanished again for every SFTP host in your list.
  • Button texts with "&", such as "Create account & start", no longer lose the "&".
File Size
NeoSSHWinManager.exe 184.5 MB
NeoSSHWinManager-Setup-1.7.0.exe 215.1 MB
NeoSSHWinManager-cli.exe 30.5 MB
v1.6.1 github.com/releases/v1.6.1
  • Updates install themselves again. Since version 1.5.4, an update that was downloaded and set to install at the next start was never installed: the installer did not start. From 1.6.1 on, the app hands over to the installer, which installs the update in the background and then starts the app again.
  • If you are still on 1.6.0 or older, install 1.6.1 once by hand: click "Download in browser" in the update window, or download the setup from the releases page and run it. Your connections and settings are kept.
  • The update window is easy to read. Headings, lists and bold text are shown formatted instead of as raw markup, and you see the changes of every version since the one you have installed.
  • Drag & drop in the file browser works again. In 1.6.0, dropping files onto the file list or the folder tree showed an error message and nothing was transferred, whether the files came from the other side of the browser, from Windows Explorer or from a mounted drive. Uploads, downloads and moves by drag & drop now work as intended. Dropping onto the path bar was not affected.
  • Full support for Windows servers. Servers running OpenSSH for Windows now work everywhere in the app, not only in the terminal:
  • Browse, upload and download files. The file browser opens in your Windows home folder and understands Windows paths such as C:\Users\me or W:\data.
  • Mount a Windows server as a drive, including a subfolder such as C:\Projects. Mounting / now gives you your home folder instead of a list of drive letters that Explorer cannot show.
  • System info shows the Windows version, CPU, memory and the server's drives, just like on Linux.
  • Packing and extracting archives, "Fetch from URL" and "Open terminal here" use PowerShell on Windows servers.
  • A completely new file browser, built into the main window. Open it with the new folder button in the sidebar, or from any host.
  • All your hosts in one place, each in its own tab. "Connect" (Ctrl+Shift+O) opens another saved host without leaving the browser.
  • This PC and the server side by side (F9), with drag & drop between them, optional folder trees and a clickable path bar that also accepts dropped files.
  • A transfer queue you can pause, resume, cancel and retry. Interrupted transfers continue where they stopped, and a dropped connection reconnects on its own.
  • Undo and redo (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y) for moves, renames and new folders.
  • When a file already exists, you choose: overwrite, skip, keep both, or compare the two files first.
  • Files open in the program of your choice, and saving uploads them back to the server.
  • Folder sync with a preview, archives packed and extracted on the server, files fetched from a web address straight onto the server, permissions and folder sizes.
  • No more limit on terminal sessions. The integrated terminal used to allow three sessions at a time. That limit is gone, and the Pro licence section has been removed from the settings.
  • No more crash on startup on security-hardened Windows systems (#22). Versions 1.4.0 to 1.5.5 could lock themselves out of their own data folder and then crash on every start. 1.6.0 repairs the folder permissions on its own, usually without asking anything.
  • A "..." row at the top of every folder list takes you one level up.
  • Moving files or folders by drag & drop asks before it moves anything. You can switch the question off, and back on under Settings → View.
  • The server folder tree starts at the connection's folder, so it also works for hosting accounts that may not open / or /home.
  • If you agreed to the anonymous usage statistics, they now also include which interface language you use, so we can see which translations matter. Nothing is sent without your consent. The consent dialog now lists exactly what is sent and appears in your language.
  • The status row in the connection panel:
  • The green "Connected" badge and the green folder open the drive in Explorer.
  • A grey folder means "not mounted"; one click mounts the connection.
  • A second folder marked "FTP" opens the file browser.
  • The unmount button is now red, so it is clear that it disconnects.
  • System info on Linux reads memory and disk sizes more reliably, and no longer shows "Loading…" behind its loading popup.
  • The first system info request to a new host no longer ends in an error.
  • The file browser turned many hosts away with "Host key was rejected" without asking. It now asks, showing the fingerprint of the key the server actually presents, and warns clearly when a known host's key has changed.
  • Opening the file browser again for a host that failed to connect now tries again.
  • The permission repair offered at startup could not fix the problem behind the crash above. When it was confirmed with a different administrator's password, it could also hand the data folder to that administrator. Both are fixed. If the folder still cannot be opened, the app now explains how to fix it instead of crashing.
  • The old SFTP browser window, replaced by the new file browser.
File Size
NeoSSHWinManager.exe 181.4 MB
NeoSSHWinManager-Setup-1.6.1.exe 211.8 MB
NeoSSHWinManager-cli.exe 30.3 MB
v1.6.0 github.com/releases/v1.6.0
  • Full support for Windows servers. Servers running OpenSSH for Windows now work everywhere in the app, not only in the terminal:
  • Browse, upload and download files. The file browser opens in your Windows home folder and understands Windows paths such as C:\Users\me or W:\data.
  • Mount a Windows server as a drive, including a subfolder such as C:\Projects. Mounting / now gives you your home folder instead of a list of drive letters that Explorer cannot show.
  • System info shows the Windows version, CPU, memory and the server's drives, just like on Linux.
  • Packing and extracting archives, "Fetch from URL" and "Open terminal here" use PowerShell on Windows servers.
  • A completely new file browser, built into the main window. Open it with the new folder button in the sidebar, or from any host.
  • All your hosts in one place, each in its own tab. "Connect" (Ctrl+Shift+O) opens another saved host without leaving the browser.
  • This PC and the server side by side (F9), with drag & drop between them, optional folder trees and a clickable path bar that also accepts dropped files.
  • A transfer queue you can pause, resume, cancel and retry. Interrupted transfers continue where they stopped, and a dropped connection reconnects on its own.
  • Undo and redo (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y) for moves, renames and new folders.
  • When a file already exists, you choose: overwrite, skip, keep both, or compare the two files first.
  • Files open in the program of your choice, and saving uploads them back to the server.
  • Folder sync with a preview, archives packed and extracted on the server, files fetched from a web address straight onto the server, permissions and folder sizes.
  • No more limit on terminal sessions. The integrated terminal used to allow three sessions at a time. That limit is gone, and the Pro licence section has been removed from the settings.
  • No more crash on startup on security-hardened Windows systems (#22). Versions 1.4.0 to 1.5.5 could lock themselves out of their own data folder and then crash on every start. 1.6.0 repairs the folder permissions on its own, usually without asking anything.
  • A "..." row at the top of every folder list takes you one level up.
  • Moving files or folders by drag & drop asks before it moves anything. You can switch the question off, and back on under Settings → View.
  • The server folder tree starts at the connection's folder, so it also works for hosting accounts that may not open / or /home.
  • If you agreed to the anonymous usage statistics, they now also include which interface language you use, so we can see which translations matter. Nothing is sent without your consent. The consent dialog now lists exactly what is sent and appears in your language.
  • The status row in the connection panel:
  • The green "Connected" badge and the green folder open the drive in Explorer.
  • A grey folder means "not mounted"; one click mounts the connection.
  • A second folder marked "FTP" opens the file browser.
  • The unmount button is now red, so it is clear that it disconnects.
  • System info on Linux reads memory and disk sizes more reliably, and no longer shows "Loading…" behind its loading popup.
  • The first system info request to a new host no longer ends in an error.
  • The file browser turned many hosts away with "Host key was rejected" without asking. It now asks, showing the fingerprint of the key the server actually presents, and warns clearly when a known host's key has changed.
  • Opening the file browser again for a host that failed to connect now tries again.
  • The permission repair offered at startup could not fix the problem behind the crash above. When it was confirmed with a different administrator's password, it could also hand the data folder to that administrator. Both are fixed. If the folder still cannot be opened, the app now explains how to fix it instead of crashing.
  • The old SFTP browser window, replaced by the new file browser.
  • A page of the main window. FileBrowserView (src/filebrowser/ui/view.py, a QWidget) is page 2 of the main window's stack, created on first use and kept until the app quits. Leaving the page only hides it: connections and transfers keep running, also while the window is minimised to the tray. shutdown() disconnects everything when the app quits, after the main window has asked about running transfers.
  • While the page is shown, the main window's own shortcuts (F2, Del, Esc, Ctrl+S/N/E) are disabled; otherwise Qt would treat the browser's F2/Del as ambiguous and trigger neither.
  • "Open terminal here" switches back to the connections page, where the terminal lives.
  • A theme switch re-colours the browser in place (set_theme()); hosts stay connected.
  • Sidebar button with the host panel's "FTP" folder icon, tooltip sidebar.file_browser.
  • One browser for all hosts. "Connect" (Ctrl+Shift+O) opens any saved connection in a new tab. Opening the browser from the main window adds the host as a tab, or brings its tab to the front if it is open already.
  • Tabs of the same host share one login, one transfer queue and one undo history. The transfer list and log show the host of every job.
  • Closing a host's last tab logs out of it; the browser stays open and can connect again.
  • A host that fails to connect keeps its tab, with the error and a "Connect again" button.
  • Split mode (one click or F9): this PC on the left (starts in C:\), the server on the right, transfers by drag & drop, F6 or context menu. The divider goes all the way to either edge and folds that side away. Both sides shrink to about the same width: the path bar moves leading segments into a "…" menu instead of demanding the width of the whole path.
  • Optional folder trees on the outer sides, loaded lazily and showing folders and files.
  • Tabs, clickable breadcrumbs with typed paths, per-connection bookmarks, a filter field, multi-selection, and mouse back/forward buttons.
  • A "..." row at the top of every list leads one level up (double-click or Enter), and files dropped onto it go to the parent folder. It stays on top in every sort order, is never filtered away, and is not counted or selected as a file.
  • The full set of standard shortcuts: F2, F5, Del, F7, Alt+Enter, Ctrl+L, Ctrl+F and more; F1 lists them all.
  • Transfer queue with separate limits for parallel uploads and downloads, and upload/download speed limits. Pause, resume, cancel and retry are available per job, alongside a transfer log with CSV export.
  • SFTP transfers run over extra channels of one SSH login; FTP uses a small session pool.
  • Interrupted transfers resume from their offset (SFTP seek, FTP REST/APPE), and a dropped connection is re-established automatically.
  • Timestamps are preserved; optional SHA-256 verification runs after each transfer.
  • Conflict dialog with overwrite, skip, keep both (name_1.ext, counting up), resume, and "apply to all" for the current action.
  • "Compare" shows both files side by side with metadata on top: text files as a line diff, images as previews, binaries as an identical/different check.
  • Open with: files open in the program chosen for their extension. The program is asked for once per extension and remembered; the mapping can be edited under Settings → Programs. Saving a file uploads it back, with a warning if the server copy changed in the meantime.
  • Fetch from URL (upload menu, Ctrl+Shift+L) puts a file from the web onto the server. The server downloads the file itself (curl/wget, PowerShell on Windows) or it is streamed through the PC without a temporary file. Only http/https URLs are accepted.
  • Server-side archives via SSH exec for Linux and Windows servers: pack, extract, upload a folder as one archive, and download as an archive.
  • Windows commands are shipped as PowerShell -EncodedCommand and call System32\tar.exe explicitly, never a GNU tar from PATH.
  • Folder sync (upload, download or both directions, optional mirror delete) with a preview list before anything runs.
  • Other tools: properties dialog with a chmod editor and folder size; duplicate; copy path; new empty file; "Open terminal here", which starts an integrated terminal session already cd'd into the folder.
  • Drag & drop onto the path bar and the folder tree. Files and folders can be dropped onto any path segment, for example the parent folder, or onto a folder in the tree; the target is highlighted while dragging. Collapsed tree folders open when the drag rests on them. The same move works on the local side in split mode.
  • Undo / redo (Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Y / Ctrl+Shift+Z, toolbar and context menu) for moves, renames, and new folders or empty files. Undoing a new folder or file only removes it while it is still empty. Items that can no longer be undone are reported and dropped from the history. Panes and tabs inside a moved folder follow it.
  • Confirmation before moving by drag & drop, with "Don't ask again". The question can be switched back on under Settings → View.
  • The server folder tree starts at the connection's path, or the account's login folder when none is set, instead of /. Many hosting accounts may not list / or /home, so the tree could never be opened down to their own folder. A setting shows the tree from / again.
  • Browser settings are stored per user in two new encrypted app_settings columns (sftp_browser_enc/_iv), separate from the regular settings form so that neither can overwrite the other.
  • Tab close buttons are drawn in the theme's colours with room to their right; Qt's white tab-bar base line is switched off.
  • A listing that finishes after its tab was closed no longer shows a "Server connection dropped" error.
  • src/ui/sftp_browser.py and src/ui/sftp_worker.py are removed (superseded by src/filebrowser/).
  • Windows OpenSSH servers are detected from the SSH banner without logging in (src/remote_os.py).
  • The file browser starts in the user's home and accepts Windows paths (W:\data, src/remote_path.py).
  • SSHFS mounts accept Windows subpaths; mounting / on a Windows server mounts the home folder instead of the drive list, whose C:-style names Explorer cannot display.
  • System info supports Windows servers (PowerShell/CIM) and lists attached drives with usage:
  • Linux: mounted block devices; tmpfs, loop, network and FUSE mounts are skipped.
  • Windows: lettered volumes on a disk partition; mapped UNC, SSHFS/WinFsp and subst drives are skipped.
  • USB devices are marked as external.
  • Linux system info reads memory and disk as raw KiB figures and formats them itself, instead of splitting localized free -h/df -h output.
  • The host key is added to known_hosts before the system-info SSH call, so a first-time host no longer shows an error.
  • The file browser rejected hosts whose key it could have verified or asked about. Unknown hosts were fingerprinted with a separate ssh-keyscan run. When that run returned nothing, for example after a timeout, the connection failed with "Host key was rejected" without asking. The fingerprint it did show was of whichever key ssh-keyscan listed first, not necessarily the key that was then trusted. The question now shows the fingerprint of the key the server actually presented during the connection.
  • Every key type stored in known_hosts for the host is preferred during negotiation. paramiko's own check only prefers the first stored type and fails when the server picks another one.
  • A changed key is refused with an explicit warning that names the known_hosts file.
  • New entries are written with LF line endings on a fresh line.
  • Pro is switched off in the UI: SHOW_PRO_UI = False hides the licence section in the settings, and FREE_TERMINAL_SESSION_LIMIT = None removes the three-session limit of the integrated terminal (both in src/pro_manager.py). Activation, the licence check and the pro_licenses table are unchanged, so both can be switched on again there. Opening the settings no longer runs the licence check (it queries wmic).
  • Telemetry sends a language query parameter (i18n.current_language(): en, de, es, ru, nl or ar) with every event. The stats server stores it in a new events.language column, added automatically to existing databases; values that are not a language code are stored empty rather than rejected.
  • The telemetry consent dialog is translated into all six languages (it was German only) and, like the settings hint, lists everything that is sent: install/login/update counters, app version and interface language.
  • About window: author website https://www.gregorkrebs.dev; the docs link is /de/docs/erste-schritte for a German interface and /en/docs/getting-started otherwise (docs_url()). The "Additional contributors" entry and the second author link are gone.
  • The status row in the connection panel now works like this:
  • The green "Connected" pill and the green folder open the mounted drive in Explorer.
  • The folder is always shown: grey while unmounted, where a click mounts the connection.
  • A second, always-visible folder marked "FTP" opens the file browser.
  • The unmount dash is red, both in the list and in the panel header.
  • System info no longer shows a "Loading…" text behind the loading popup.
  • The app locked itself out of its own data folder on startup and then crashed on every launch (GitHub issue #22, affects 1.4.0–1.5.5). The CWE-732 ACL hardening introduced in 1.4.0 replaced the DACL on %APPDATA%\SSHWinManager and data.db with a single ACE granting the owner FILE_GENERIC_READ | FILE_GENERIC_WRITE — a mask that omits FILE_TRAVERSE, DELETE and WRITE_DAC, and that removed SYSTEM and Administrators entirely. Without FILE_TRAVERSE nothing inside the folder can be opened on any installation that does not hand out SeChangeNotifyPrivilege ("bypass traverse checking"), which security-hardened Windows 10 policies routinely withhold: startup died with GetFileSecurity: Access denied (1.5.2) or sqlite3.OperationalError: unable to open database file (1.5.3–1.5.5). Without WRITE_DAC the next start could not undo it, and because the app re-applied the same ACL on every launch, a manual icacls /reset held only until the next start. Removing Administrators is why launching as administrator did not help either. The owner ACE now grants full access (SYSTEM included — it can take ownership of any file regardless, so excluding it bought no security), directory ACEs are inheritable, and hardening that would cost the app access to its own data is detected and rolled back instead of persisted. Other users on the machine still have no access to the credential database.
  • The permission repair could not repair permissions. repair_owner() only ever rewrote the owner field, never the DACL, so it had no effect on the failure above — hence "regardless of whether you click Yes or No, the app crashes" in the report. It now resets the DACL as well. The startup check also tests whether the folder is actually usable instead of inferring it from the owner field, and repairs what it can in-process first: rewriting a DACL only needs WRITE_DAC, which the owner always holds implicitly, so the common case is fixed silently with no UAC prompt and no dialog at all.
  • An elevated repair could hand the data folder to the wrong account. If the UAC prompt was answered with a different administrator's credentials, the elevated helper took ownership for that administrator, since it read %USERNAME% from its own environment. The user's SID is now passed to the helper explicitly (--repair-permissions "<paths>" "<sid>").
  • The current user's SID is read from the process token instead of being looked up from %USERNAME%. The environment variable is inherited from whatever started the app and can resolve to a different account (renamed account, a domain account sharing the name, runas, a scheduled task) — writing an owner-only DACL for the wrong SID is what makes the lockout permanent.
  • A data folder that still cannot be opened after the repair now explains the problem, names the folder and gives the takeown/icacls commands to fix it, instead of crashing with a stack trace into crash_report.txt.
  • Opening the file browser again for a connection whose first attempt failed now retries the connection instead of only raising the old window.
File Size
NeoSSHWinManager.exe 180.7 MB
NeoSSHWinManager-Setup-1.6.0.exe 211.1 MB
NeoSSHWinManager-cli.exe 30.2 MB
v1.5.5 github.com/releases/v1.5.5
  • CLI history: what was run over the CLI companion is now visible in the app. Every NeoSSHWinManager-cli.exe invocation against a saved connection is recorded and can be reviewed inside the GUI — both --exec calls (command, output, exit code) and interactive sessions (full screen transcript). A new "View CLI history" button in the connection details opens a dedicated panel (src/ui/cli_history_panel.py) listing entries newest first — a Session/Command badge, timestamp (start–end for sessions), the command line and its exit code, with the output collapsed until clicked so long histories stay scannable — plus "Download as .txt" for the complete history and "Clear history". UI strings ship in all six supported languages.
  • History entries are stored in a new encrypted cli_history table: command and output are encrypted with the same per-user key as connection passwords, never written in plaintext, and are capped at 500 entries per host (oldest pruned by insertion order) and 256 KB per entry to bound database growth. The CLI process never holds the GUI session's encryption key, so it hands the entry to the running GUI instance over the existing user-restricted IPC pipe (new cli_log action, same access-key check and per-PID rate limit as cli_connect), which does the encrypting and storing.
  • Interactive session transcripts are rendered the way the screen actually looked rather than dumped as a raw byte stream: backspace and DEL now delete the character to the left instead of leaving \x08 litter in the log after a typo, and a bare carriage return repositions the cursor instead of being treated as a newline — so progress bars (pip, apt, curl, docker pull, npm) show their end state instead of one line per redraw. ANSI/VT100 escape sequences are stripped. Recording is strictly best-effort and fully exception-swallowed; it can never affect the SSH session, its exit code, or its runtime.
  • NEOSSH_EXEC_TIMEOUT (seconds) sets an optional time limit for --exec; unset means no limit.
  • SSHFS drives no longer disappear because their long-running process lost or blocked on GUI-owned debug pipes. Mounts now run in foreground mode with parent-independent standard handles, retain their process handle, and require a free drive letter that becomes stably available.
  • Disconnect now finds the exact SSHFS process through the bundled psutil dependency instead of the deprecated WMIC command, treats an already absent drive as success, and cancels stale Explorer label updates that could create ghost-drive entries.
  • The CLI tool always exited with code 0, even when nothing worked. launch_ssh_in_current_terminal() returned nothing and cli_main.py reported success unconditionally, so a failed connection, a rejected host key or a failed authentication was indistinguishable from a successful run — scripts calling the CLI could not detect failure at all. The function now returns an exit code, and --exec propagates the remote command's exit status (via recv_exit_status()) instead of discarding it.
  • --exec output was lost whenever the caller redirected stdout. Output was written to the CONOUT$ console screen buffer through WriteFile, which is not the process's stdout: NeoSSHWinManager-cli.exe --connect-cli … --exec "…" > out.txt reported success and produced an empty file. Non-interactive mode now writes exclusively to the real process streams, and the interactive path falls back to them if no valid console handle exists instead of writing into the void.
  • --exec aborted after 30 seconds. The hardcoded timeout was too short for anything substantial (test runs, npm install, backups) and cut execution off mid-command; ssh itself imposes no such limit. There is no default limit anymore — see NEOSSH_EXEC_TIMEOUT above.
  • --exec status messages ("Connecting to …") went to stdout and contaminated the command output that scripts parse; they now go to stderr, leaving stdout to the remote command alone. Execution errors with an empty str(e) — common for socket.timeout — no longer produce a bare "Error executing command:" with no cause, and a timeout now says so explicitly and points at NEOSSH_EXEC_TIMEOUT.
  • The IPC listener silently dropped any request larger than 64 KB. A single ReadFile against a message-mode pipe signals an oversized message with ERROR_MORE_DATA rather than an error, so the GUI just saw a truncated payload fail to parse and handled no request at all. The listener now drains the full message (with a 2 MB ceiling) and the pipe buffers were raised to 1 MB — required for cli_log entries carrying command output, and a latent bug for any future large request.
File Size
NeoSSHWinManager.exe 180.7 MB
NeoSSHWinManager-Setup-1.5.5.exe 210.5 MB
NeoSSHWinManager-cli.exe 29.7 MB
v1.5.4 github.com/releases/v1.5.4
  • Use of the update function is now part of opt-in telemetry. Users who have consented to telemetry transmit additional information regarding whether they use the update function, how they access it, and whether an update was actually performed: update_check (with source=startup|settings and result=available|uptodate|failed), update_action (which button was pressed: Download, Browser, Later, Install Now, Enable/Disable for next startup), update_download (ok|failed), and update_result. Each event also includes the currently running version. No new personal data is collected; the events act as counters without any identifying markers, and the entire transmission remains subject to the telemetry_enabled setting.
  • It is not possible to determine whether an update was actually successful while the process is underway: the installer provides no feedback and only executes after the application has closed. Therefore, launch_pending_installer() creates a file named update_attempt.json alongside the pending update marker. Upon the next startup, the running version is compared with the recorded target version: the result is installed if they match, and not_installed if the installation was aborted or failed. Entries older than one week are discarded without analysis rather than being included in the statistics for the wrong day.
  • Auto-update now installs via the Windows installer instead of swapping the exe. The update check downloads the release's Setup.exe (never the portable exe again) into %APPDATA%\SSHWinManager\updates and remembers it in pending_update.json. If the update is armed, the next program start hands over to a helper script that waits for the app to exit, runs the installer, and starts the app again afterwards — whether the installer completed or was cancelled. This guarantees the update is actually applied and keeps the installed copy's registry entries, shortcuts and uninstall information in sync.
  • Releases now ship a sha256sums.txt asset, so the SHA-256 verification the updater has always attempted actually runs — a downloaded installer whose hash does not match is discarded instead of installed.
  • The update dialog now offers "Install update at next program start" (a checkbox that can be toggled at any time) and "Restart and install now". A running update check also reports an installer that was already downloaded earlier, so a declined update can be armed later without downloading again — including when the app is offline and the GitHub check fails.
  • Auto-update silently did nothing; the old version kept starting. The settings screens called install_on_exit() immediately after the download finished, not on exit: the generated batch script waited 3 seconds and then tried to del the running executable, which Windows refuses. The subsequent move failed too, so the old exe was simply restarted. Every step was unchecked and its output discarded, so nothing was logged or shown. On top of that, an installed copy usually lives in a directory the user may not write to at all, and the path validation used to reject perfectly normal paths (anything containing (, ) or ~, e.g. C:\Program Files (x86)\…) without any user-visible error. The whole exe-swap mechanism is gone — see above.
  • The update check picked the portable NeoSSHWinManager.exe release asset, so even a successful swap left an installed copy registered under the old version. It now looks for the Setup asset and falls back to the release page in the browser if a release does not ship one.
File Size
NeoSSHWinManager.exe 180.5 MB
NeoSSHWinManager-Setup-1.5.4.exe 210.1 MB
NeoSSHWinManager-cli.exe 29.5 MB
v1.5.3 github.com/releases/v1.5.3
  • Startup crash on broken/orphaned ACLs: _set_secure_permissions() no longer crashes the app when the DACL itself can't be read (e.g. leftover broken permissions from an older install) — degrades to a logged warning instead, matching how the write step already behaved.
  • Pro activation always failed with a network error: the validation endpoint pointed at the apex domain, which redirects to www. and silently drops the POST body along the way. Now points at www. directly.
File Size
NeoSSHWinManager.exe 180.5 MB
NeoSSHWinManager-Setup-1.5.2.exe 210 MB
NeoSSHWinManager-cli.exe 29.5 MB
v1.5.2 github.com/releases/v1.5.2
  • Windows installer (installer/NeoSSHWinManager.iss, built with Inno Setup 6): a proper Setup.exe alongside the existing standalone executables, with a setup wizard offering desktop shortcut and "start with Windows" tasks, an optional CLI component (NeoSSHWinManager-cli.exe can be excluded via a Compact install), and an app-preferences page to pre-select the application's language and dark/light theme before first launch. The installer's own UI is available in English, German, Spanish, Russian and Dutch. Preferences chosen in the wizard are written to install_prefs.json and applied by AuthManager.register() when the first local user account is created, instead of the hardcoded en/dark defaults.
  • CLI companion executable restored: NeoSSHWinManager-cli.exe (console subsystem, cli_main.py) is back in the build (NeoSSHWinManager-cli.spec, build_dual.ps1) after being dropped from distribution in 1.5.1. Lets a saved connection with CLI access enabled be reached non-interactively via NeoSSHWinManager-cli.exe --connect-cli <access_key> [--exec "command"] while the main GUI is running and logged in. The GUI's own build stays a standalone onefile executable, unaffected.
  • FTP and FTPS support: Connections now carry a protocol (SFTP / FTPS / FTP). The file browser speaks all three — the new src/ftp_client.py implements FTP over ftplib with explicit TLS (AUTH TLS, port 21), implicit TLS (port 990) and plain unencrypted FTP, MLSD listings with a LIST fallback for older servers, passive/active mode, progress-reporting up- and downloads and automatic re-login after an idle timeout.
  • Add/Edit form gained a protocol selector plus FTP options (implicit TLS, passive mode, certificate verification); the port follows the protocol default (22 / 21 / 990) unless a custom port was entered, and SSH-only fields (key file, drive letter, CLI access, PuTTY key) are hidden for FTP connections.
  • Plain-FTP connections can be handed to the on-board Windows Explorer FTP client from the card context menu (the password stays out of the URL — Explorer asks for it).
  • FTP/FTPS connections cannot be mounted as a drive and have no SSH terminal: their card shows a protocol badge and opens the file browser, and mount/terminal/system-info actions report that they are unavailable instead of failing later.
  • Database migrations now run each ALTER TABLE independently, so one column that SQLite refuses (e.g. adding a UNIQUE column to an old table) no longer silently skips every migration after it.
  • SSHFS write corruption: Files could end up as pure NUL bytes after writing/overwriting through a mounted drive. Caused by FileInfoTimeout=-1, which turns on WinFsp's write-back file data caching; a hard-killed sshfs.exe (e.g. on unmount) could drop not-yet-flushed pages and leave the server-side zero-fill in place. Mounts now use a finite FileInfoTimeout, synchronous SFTP writes (sshfs_sync) and disabled read-ahead (no_readahead) instead.
  • New folders/files invisible until refresh: sshfs.exe carries its own directory-entry cache (dir_cache/dcache_dir_timeout, default 20s) entirely separate from — and underneath — the WinFsp-side cache timeouts this app already sets, so the existing "disable directory cache" setting never fully applied. Mounts now also tune the sshfs-side cache (fully disabled when that setting is on, tightened to match otherwise).
  • "New Folder"/new file silently duplicated 4x in Explorer: on a mounted drive, creating an item in Windows Explorer could appear to fail (no rename prompt) and then show up to 4 times after a manual refresh. Root cause is an upstream WinFsp/Windows security-token mismatch (TokenUser vs TokenOwner) that only affects the built-in Administrator account when UAC Admin Approval Mode is disabled for it (Windows' default for that account) — not fixable from the app's mount options. Documented for anyone else hitting it: enable "User Account Control: Admin Approval Mode for the Built-in Administrator account" (secpol.msc or FilterAdministratorToken=1) and log back in.
  • Startup crash after fixing the account-token issue above: files created earlier under the affected account end up owned by the BUILTIN\Administrators group instead of the user; once that account's token no longer carries the group, the app's own permission-hardening (SetFileSecurity) started failing with access denied and crashing startup. That call is now best-effort (logs a warning instead of crashing), and the app now detects this exact ownership mismatch on its own at startup and offers a one-time, UAC-elevated automatic repair (src/permission_repair.py) — so anyone hitting this after an update or reinstall gets a guided fix instead of a crash.
  • CLI access key could never match, for any connection: get_by_cli_key() re-encrypted the incoming key with a fresh random AES-GCM IV and compared the result against the stored ciphertext — which uses a different random IV from when the key was originally saved, so the comparison could never succeed even for the correct key. Lookup now uses a deterministic cli_access_key_hash (SHA-256 of the plaintext key) instead; existing connections get this hash backfilled automatically on next login.
  • CLI SSH connections always rejected: launch_ssh_in_current_terminal() (used by --connect-cli) set a RejectPolicy host-key policy but never actually loaded known_hosts into paramiko first, so every connection was rejected as "unknown host" regardless of what was already trusted on disk. Now loads the same known_hosts file the rest of the app uses before checking the policy.
  • Embedded terminal froze the whole window while connecting: opening an SSH session in the integrated xterm.js terminal (terminal_client setting = "xterm") called TerminalBridgeServer.create_session_token() — which runs a blocking paramiko.SSHClient.connect() — directly on the Qt main thread. A slow or unresponsive host could freeze the entire UI for the length of paramiko's auth timeout (30s by default) on top of the connect timeout. Connection setup now runs in a background TerminalConnectWorker (src/ui/worker.py), matching the existing MountWorker/UnmountWorker pattern; the tab is only created once the SSH session is actually up.
  • CLI access over --connect-cli now also works for password-authenticated connections: the local IPC response includes the password (previously withheld per an earlier finding). The pipe was already restricted to the current user's SID (_make_pipe_security_attributes), the 64-byte access key itself is a strong bearer secret, and requests are already rate-limited per PID — sending the password over this already-restricted channel was the missing piece for a CLI feature whose whole purpose is unattended access to saved connections, not an added exposure.
File Size
NeoSSHWinManager.exe 180.5 MB
NeoSSHWinManager-Setup-1.5.2.exe 210 MB
NeoSSHWinManager-cli.exe 29.5 MB
v1.5.1 github.com/releases/v1.5.1
  • Integrated in-app terminal: New xterm.js-based SSH terminal embedded directly in the app (via QWebEngineView/QWebChannel, bridged to a local WebSocket server), selectable in Settings alongside the existing external SSH/PuTTY launchers. Supports multiple concurrent sessions per connection with a tab bar, background persistence when switching panels, and a reconnect button after disconnect.
  • Native SFTP browser: New file-browser window (src/ui/sftp_browser.py) reachable from the connection card once a host is mounted — directory navigation, upload/download with progress, rename, delete and new-folder, all run off the UI thread via dedicated worker threads.
  • Pro license system: Machine-fingerprint based activation (src/pro_manager.py) with an offline, HMAC-verified license check and a new "Pro License" section in Settings. The free tier is capped at 3 concurrent integrated-terminal sessions; exceeding it surfaces an upgrade prompt.
  • Connection templates & duplicate-name detection: Add/Edit dialog gained a template dropdown (save/apply/delete) and now blocks duplicate connection/template names, auto-suggesting a unique alternative.
  • Connection card context menu: Right-click menu for mount/unmount, open in Explorer, open SFTP browser, and connect via OpenSSH/PuTTY/integrated terminal.
  • Logout confirmation dialog: Choose between staying logged in, quitting while keeping drives mounted, or quitting and unmounting everything.
  • Startup prerequisite check: Blocks launch with download links if WinFsp and/or SSHFS-Win are not installed.
  • Settings: New terminal-backend selector (SSH/PuTTY/integrated xterm) and a toggle to disable SSHFS attribute/directory caching for hosts where stale cache data is an issue.
  • New GitHub Actions release-build workflow and a nightly version/push helper script for the release process.
  • The connection card's SSH button now opens the integrated terminal when that backend is selected in Settings, falling back to the external client otherwise; "open mounted path" now opens the new SFTP browser instead of the system file explorer directly.
  • Title bar redesigned with a unified look matching the selected Dark/Light theme; accent color updated app-wide (#00b4d8 → #0077b6).
  • SSHFS mounts now set explicit WinFsp attribute/directory/volume-info cache timeouts (tightened further when caching is disabled), and unmounting escalates to force-killing a stuck sshfs.exe process after a 10s grace period.
  • Password-based SSH_ASKPASS hardening (one-time IPC token instead of plaintext env var) now applies starting at security level 1 instead of requiring level 2, for both the native SSH launcher and PuTTY.
  • System tray "Quit" now routes through the same mount-cleanup/logout confirmation flow as the main window instead of calling QApplication.quit() directly.
  • Frameless window resize-cursor handling now works correctly when the mouse is over child widgets, not just the window frame itself.
  • Build: CLI companion executable dropped from build_dual.ps1 (GUI-only distribution going forward); PyInstaller build now strips symbols and excludes unused stdlib modules (tkinter, unittest, pytest, etc.) to reduce executable size.
  • get_user_by_username no longer selects sensitive columns (password hash/salt, encrypted key) it doesn't need, reducing accidental exposure of credential material in memory.
  • Admin-only account operations (password reset, delete user, list users) now enforce authorization at the auth_manager layer instead of relying solely on UI-level gating.
  • Login lockout timers switched from monotonic to wall-clock time so a lockout can no longer be bypassed by restarting the app.
  • The updater validates executable/update file paths before embedding them in its self-replace script, and now verifies a SHA-256 checksum of the downloaded update before applying it (falls back to a warning if the release provides no checksum).
  • Telemetry action parameters are now URL-encoded before being sent, closing a parameter-injection edge case in the query string.
  • Terminal and SFTP sessions use single-use, expiring session tokens, wipe passwords from memory immediately after use, and bind the local bridge server to loopback only; both features share the same TOFU host-key verification and confirmation dialog used elsewhere in the app.
  • Second app launch now correctly restores/focuses the main window even when it was hidden to the system tray, instead of doing nothing.
File Size
NeoSSHWinManager.exe 173.2 MB
v1.5.0 github.com/releases/v1.5.0
  • Connection groups/tags and reusable templates across the data model, database migration, add/edit flows and translations
  • Bulk mount/dismount actions and a group filter in the main connection header
  • Dedicated profile panel for end users to review their account and change their password
  • Manual GitHub update checks with download progress and an install-on-exit flow
  • Telemetry opt-in prompt, persisted telemetry settings and asynchronous telemetry submission
  • Reworked the main window, settings screen and right-panel forms for the 1.5.0 release layout
  • Connection cards now show group pills and compact host details with the drive letter in the subtitle
  • Add/Edit connection flows now support templates explicitly and surface group metadata in the UI
  • Replaced many native message boxes with a themed custom dialog for warnings, confirmations and success messages
  • Pinned core Python dependency versions for the 1.5.0 release environment
  • Updated visible application version strings in the main window, about dialog and single-instance mutex
  • Reduced debug logging of sensitive command-line arguments in the PuTTY launcher
  • Hardened in-memory handling of temporary password tokens used by SSH ASKPASS
  • Hardened SSH_ASKPASS password exchange by replacing plaintext environment transfer with one-time IPC tokens
  • Relaxed first-contact host-key handling to OpenSSH accept-new for SSH and sysinfo flows while keeping changed-host failures
  • Increased minimum password length from 6 to 8 characters in registration and user-management flows
  • Restricted crash report file permissions so stack traces are no longer world-readable
  • Masked PuTTY password arguments in debug logs to prevent credential leakage
  • Added password fallback when a stored SSH key fails but a password is still available for the same connection
  • Unified destructive confirmation prompts and dirty-form handling through the styled dialog layer
  • Corrected multiple German translation strings and save-label spellings used in the 1.5.0 UI
File Size
NeoSSHWinManager.exe 46 MB
NeoSSHWinManager-cli.exe 28.2 MB
v1.4.1 github.com/releases/v1.4.1
  • Crash when clicking a mounted host (NameError: conn_id not defined in info panel lambdas)
  • Copy button in error dialogs not working
  • Loading state not clearing when ask-password dialog is cancelled
  • Edit mode: section headers too bold compared to info panel
  • Edit mode: password dots disproportionately large
  • Info panel: drive badge replaced with folder SVG icon, only visible when host is mounted
  • Edit mode now matches info panel field order, container structure and section labels
  • Status badge (connected/disconnected pill) shown at top of edit mode for visual continuity
  • Save button: floppy disk icon replaces checkmark
  • Light mode: save button gets subtle green background; delete icon solid red for better contrast
File Size
NeoSSHWinManager.exe 45.7 MB
NeoSSHWinManager-cli.exe 27.8 MB
v1.4.0 github.com/releases/v1.4.0
  • Comprehensive Security Audit: Hardened credential storage, session handling, encryption routines and key derivation across auth_manager, crypto, database, ssh_launcher and sshfs_controller
  • CWE-312 · Connection Metadata Encryption: Host, username, connection name and remote path are now encrypted with AES-256-GCM before being stored in the database. Existing entries are migrated automatically on first login.
  • CWE-732 · Windows ACL hardened: win32security is now a hard module-level import — a missing pywin32 installation raises an explicit ImportError on startup rather than leaving the database file world-readable.
  • CWE-307 · Brute-Force Protection: Login attempts are now rate-limited per username. After 5 consecutive failures the account is locked for 30 seconds; each subsequent block escalates (10 attempts → 10 min, 5 → 1 h, and further).
  • CWE-362 · Session Race Condition fixed: Session._current_user is protected by a threading.RLock; enc_key updates after password changes are performed atomically.
  • CWE-591 · Memory-Lock failures now visible: mlock_memory() / munlock_memory() now emit a WARNING log entry on failure instead of returning False silently.
  • CWE-214 · CLI Key via stdin: --connect-cli - reads the access key from stdin, preventing exposure in process listings and shell history.
  • CWE-78 · Shell Injection Prevention: Removed unsafe shell interpolation in ssh_launcher; added _is_safe_label() in sshfs_controller. SSH terminal now launched via cmd.exe + CREATE_NEW_CONSOLE instead of shell=True.
  • CLI Keys Migration: Plaintext CLI-access-keys are automatically encrypted on first login after the update.
  • SSH_ASKPASS for Password Auth: Passwords are passed via the SSH_ASKPASS mechanism — never exposed in the process list.
  • Connection Name Validation: Names containing shell metacharacters are rejected before database insertion.
  • MITM Fix (v1.3.1 omission corrected): StrictHostKeyChecking=yes was already applied in v1.3.1 but not documented. Installations running v1.3.0 or earlier are vulnerable — upgrade immediately.
  • PuTTY PPK Integration: Auto-detection and configurable PPK key path for PuTTY-based connections
  • Native SSH Terminal Improvements: Overhauled terminal launch logic for both PuTTY and native OpenSSH
  • SysInfo available with key or password: System information is retrieved whenever an SSH key or stored password is configured — the security level setting no longer gates sysinfo access.
  • SysInfo Auth Overlay: A clear overlay is shown when neither key nor password is configured, instead of a generic error.
  • Login Lockout Countdown: After a tier-boundary lockout, the login form shows a live countdown with human-readable time remaining.
  • Login Button gated on input: The Sign-in button is disabled until both username and password (≥ 1 char each) are filled.
  • About Dialog Redesign: Card layout with grouped clickable link buttons for project, documentation, GitHub and author links
  • Sidebar About Button: Persistent About button in the sidebar
  • SSHFS Mass Disconnect Bug: Fixed a race condition in sshfs_controller that caused all mounted drives to disconnect simultaneously
  • Drive Unmount Crash: Prevented a crash when a drive was unmounted while the UI still held a reference to it (#1)
  • QMessageBox Dark Mode: Corrected background color of message boxes in dark mode (#3)
  • F2 Crash on Non-Standard Widgets: Prevented crash when pressing F2 on non-standard widgets (#4)
  • Form Scroll Behavior: Fixed scrolling in Add/Edit connection dialog on smaller screens
  • Crash Report Path: Crash reports are now written to %APPDATA%\SSHWinManager\crash_report.txt
  • Worker Thread Error Propagation: Mount/unmount worker threads now catch exceptions and emit a MountResult error instead of crashing silently
File Size
NeoSSHWinManager.exe 45.7 MB
NeoSSHWinManager-cli.exe 27.9 MB
v1.3.1 github.com/releases/v1.3.1
  • Agent CLI key is now directly visible in the connection editor instead of being masked.
  • Added two visible SVG actions for the CLI key: copy and regenerate.
  • Added check-icon feedback after copying the key.
  • Bumped desktop app and website metadata to 1.3.1.
File Size
NeoSSHWinManager.exe 42.9 MB
NeoSSHWinManager-cli.exe 27.8 MB
v1.3.0 github.com/releases/v1.3.0
  • Full-screen Settings and User Management panels via QStackedWidget
  • Sidebar navigation with active-state highlighting
  • [i] button exclusively opens SSH live system-info panel
  • Edit button always visible, disabled when connection is mounted
  • Primary buttons: gradient #00b4d8 to #0077b6, black text
  • Title bar colour adapts to active theme via DwmSetWindowAttribute (Windows 11+)
  • Checkbox checked indicator: 14x14px, white checkmark on red background
  • Panel headers: 52px height, kicker labels removed, titles vertically centred
  • List-style layout with 4px colour-coded progress bars for CPU/RAM/Disk
  • Full static website in website/ (landing, features, docs, changelog, download)
  • Interactive browser simulation (website/app.html) in pure HTML/CSS/JS
  • No installation needed, deployable via GitHub Pages
  • Removed legacy credential_store.py
  • AppUserModelID prefix changed from dennis. to neo.
  • Version bump to 1.3.0
File Size
NeoSSHWinManager.exe 42.9 MB
NeoSSHWinManager-cli.exe 27.8 MB
v1.2.0 github.com/releases/v1.2.0
  • Add persisted light/dark theme support.
  • Add ask-each-time authentication mode for connections.
  • Improve connection card click behavior for mounting.
  • Fix application icons for login and main windows.
  • Bump application and Windows metadata to 1.2.0.
File Size
NeoSSHWinManager.exe 42.7 MB
NeoSSHWinManager-cli.exe 27.7 MB