RemoteDesk – A modern SSH, SFTP, RDP & VNC client for Windows

Every saved server, credential, jump-host chain, and host-key fingerprint is stored inside a single encrypted file (%APPDATA%\RemoteDesk\sessions.vault) protected by your master password.

• AES-256-GCM authenticated encryption — a wrong password produces a clean tag mismatch rather than a partial decrypt.
• PBKDF2-SHA256 with 600,000 iterations for key derivation — slows brute-force attempts dramatically.
• Atomic writes — a save is written to a temporary file and swapped into place, so an interrupted save never corrupts your vault.
• Key material is zeroed on manual lock, idle auto-lock, and app exit.
• Changing the master password re-encrypts the vault in place — the current password is verified against the file on disk, then the whole payload is rewritten under a fresh key through the same atomic write. Nothing is deleted and re-created, so a failure part-way through cannot cost you your sessions or your empty groups.
• Unlocking runs off the UI thread, with a progress ring and disabled inputs, so the deliberately slow key derivation no longer freezes the window on the one screen where a frozen window reads as a rejected password.
• Group names live inside the vault too. Which folders you had expanded — and therefore their names — used to sit in plain-text settings; a vault whose job is hiding that you have a folder called Clients/Acme should not write that name out beside itself. Existing installs migrate on first unlock.
• No "remember device", no cloud backup, no master-password reset — if you forget the master password your sessions are gone and the vault must be reset. This is intentional and what makes the model strong against a stolen laptop.

• A full-featured terminal that matches the experience of a modern desktop terminal emulator, sized to the window from the very first connection so full-screen programs like top use every row.
• Password or private-key auth, with browse-for-key-file and optional passphrase.
• Inline credential prompts at connect time when nothing is saved — banners label which hop is asking ([Jump host: bastion:22], [Target: 10.1.1.81:22]).
• Copy / Paste / Select All via Ctrl+Shift+C / V / A. Multi-line paste opens a confirm dialog with a yellow warning that pasting will execute commands.
• Multi-paste: right-click → Multi-paste to terminals → pick any subset of open terminals (All / None / Others shortcuts) and send the same text to every one.
• Switch to root with su — tick it on the session's Auth tab and RemoteDesk runs su - as soon as you are logged in, entering a saved root password automatically or leaving you at the prompt to type it. Any Initial command then runs as root.
• Multi Exec — in Multi View, broadcast your typing to every open terminal at once, with a per-pane opt-out and a Multi paste button for the clipboard.
• Trust-on-first-use host keys, shared across sessions — the SHA-256 fingerprint is shown for confirmation on first connect and then remembered in a shared known-hosts store, so a bastion you accept once is trusted by every session routed through it. A later mismatch is refused outright rather than connecting silently, and Settings → Known hosts is where you clear a key after a legitimate rebuild.
• Reconnect banner on disconnect/error — one click reuses the same tab with scrollback preserved.

Right-click any SSH session → Open file browser (SFTP). The SFTP tab shares the SSH session's credentials and jump-host chain — no second login.

• Dual pane: local Windows files on the left, remote SFTP files on the right, each with Up / Home / Refresh + editable path bar.
• Native Windows shell icons for file types (.txt, .zip, .png...) — icons match what you see in Explorer.
• Drag-drop in both directions and from Windows Explorer onto the remote pane.
• Recursive folder transfers — directory tree is walked, matching remote dirs created on demand (existing dirs reused, not re-created).
• Per-transfer progress and cancel in a transfer drawer with live throughput, direction-tinted arrows, and color-coded state.
• Merge / overwrite prompts before clobbering anything that already exists (in either direction).
• Concurrency cap: up to 3 transfers run in parallel per SFTP tab; the rest queue in the drawer.
• Recursive delete with pre-counted progress (47 / 189 items).

RDP sessions render inside the tab — the same way MobaXterm shows RDP, using the remote-desktop engine already built into Windows.

• No external mstsc.exe window, no taskbar entry for the session.
• No Windows 11 "Opening Remote Desktop Connection" warning — that prompt is tied to mstsc.exe opening .rdp files, which RemoteDesk doesn't do.
• Saved password injected directly — no Windows Credential Manager dance, no re-prompt.
• HiDPI-correct — the session opens at the true pixel size of the tab and the correct scale factor is sent to the server, so text on the remote stays crisp.
• Live resize with the RemoteDesk window — modern Windows servers renegotiate a new resolution on the fly; older hosts fall back to smart-sized scaling.
• Clipboard sharing is a per-session setting on the Auth tab, next to the certificate policy. Redirection runs both ways — while the session is open the remote host can read anything you copy locally, including a password copied out of a password manager — so it is on by default for convenience but refusable per session. Drive, printer and smart-card redirection are off; smart-card redirection would expose your local card and PIN to the remote.
• Reconnect works on a live session — redialling waits for the control to report itself disconnected first, instead of producing an error tab.

VNC sessions render inside the tab — the remote screen is drawn directly into the pane, with no separate viewer process required.

• Aspect-preserving fit with letterboxing (matches TightVNC / TigerVNC viewer behaviour).
• Native mouse / keyboard / scroll-wheel forwarding, with Windows keys mapped to their correct remote equivalents.
• Send keys menu for Ctrl+Alt+Del, ☔Win, Alt+Tab, Alt+F4 — Windows intercepts these locally, so the menu synthesizes them directly into the remote framebuffer.
• Plaintext-VNC warning bar when connecting to a non-private host with no SSH tunneling — the connection still proceeds (LAN-only setups are valid) but you're warned before typing a password.
• Automatic SSH tunneling when you add a jump host — the otherwise-plaintext VNC traffic rides inside SSH encryption. No "use SSH tunnel" checkbox to remember.
• Loopback gateway hop for the libvirt / QEMU / Proxmox case where the VNC console is bound to the hypervisor's 127.0.0.1 — one extra SSH hop lands on the hypervisor itself before the TCP forward.
• Better error messages for empty / DES-weak passwords and per-hop SSH chain failures — you always know which hop rejected the connection.

• Any number of hops, reorderable in the session editor — first row is dialed first, last row does the final TCP forward to the target.
• Per-hop credentials — mix password and private-key auth across the chain.
• Per-hop error attribution — when a chain fails, the error names the exact hop and auth method (e.g. SSH hop failed: admin@bastion:22 (password auth): Permission denied (password)).
• Works for SSH, SFTP, and VNC — same chain definition is reused across protocols.
• Inline prompts for missing jump-host credentials at connect time (in the terminal for SSH/SFTP); for VNC, missing credentials produce a clear pre-connect error rather than ambiguous "Permission denied".

• Reads a .mxtsessions export and shows every entry in a preview dialog before importing.
• Supported protocols (SSH, SFTP, RDP, VNC) are pre-checked.
• Unsupported protocols (Telnet, Mosh, Serial, RSH, Xdmcp, FTP, WSL, Browser, Shell, AWS S3, ...) appear with a disabled checkbox and an "Unsupported" tag — you see exactly what was skipped and why.
• Folder structure preserved — MobaXterm's \-separated folders map to RemoteDesk's /-separated groups, including empty folders.
• Single-hop jump hosts ("Connect through SSH gateway") are imported natively for SSH/SFTP sessions.
• Passwords are not imported (MobaXterm encrypts them with its own master key) — you'll be prompted inline on first connect.

• Hierarchical TreeView with /-separated groups; right-click for New group / New subgroup / New session in this group / Rename / Delete.
• Drag-drop sessions between groups, or onto the empty area to move back to root.
• Multi-select with Ctrl/Shift — right-click action menu items apply to the whole multi-set (open many SSH tabs at once, duplicate, delete with a single confirmation).
• Live search filters by name or user@host:port; group structure is preserved.
• Persistent expansion state — the tree shape you leave at quit is what you find at next launch.
• Drag-to-reorder tabs; right-click for Close / Close others / Close all. Closing a tab selects its neighbour rather than the last tab in the strip — which matters with Multi Exec on, where landing somewhere unexpected puts your keyboard where you did not mean it to be.
• Multi View renders every open tab simultaneously in an auto-laid grid (up to 2 columns, an odd last row spanning full width) — the active pane gets a colored border. The title-bar button shows a grid icon in single view and a single-pane icon while tiled.
• Multi Exec broadcasts your keystrokes to every open terminal while in Multi View, with an Exclude from multiexec checkbox per pane and a Multi paste button for the clipboard. Leaving Multi View turns it off.
• A locked vault shows a "Vault locked" placeholder with an Unlock button, so an auto-lock no longer looks like a session list that has lost everything.