QuickSSH is out

QuickSSH v1.0.0 is live on Play. It's an SSH client for Android, it's free, and it does almost nothing — which was the point.

Why

The build that started this was a stuck process on a VPS I was checking on from a train. I had an SSH client installed. Opening it meant finding the connection in a list, waiting through a splash screen, and then re-entering a password on a phone keyboard while the train went through a tunnel.

The job I actually wanted was: unlock phone, tap server, type systemctl restart x, close phone. Under thirty seconds. Every client I tried put at least three things between me and that.

So the design brief was subtractive. Save the credentials once. Put a fingerprint in front of them. Open straight into the terminal. Anything that isn't on that path doesn't ship in v1.

What's in v1.0.0

• Saved servers with one-tap connect
• Biometric lock — fingerprint or face, whatever the device exposes
• Encrypted local credential storage
• A terminal that handles the keys you actually need on a phone
• Nothing else

Credentials

This is the part I spent the most time on and the part nobody will notice if I got it right.

Server credentials are the keys to infrastructure. Putting them in someone else's cloud so they can sync across devices is a trade I wasn't willing to make on behalf of my users, so QuickSSH doesn't sync. Credentials are encrypted and stored locally, and they sit behind the device's own biometric prompt. The app collects nothing and sends nothing anywhere. The Play data safety card says "no data collected" because that's literally true, not because I found a wording that technically qualified.

The cost of that decision is real: set up a new phone and you set up your servers again. I think that's the right trade for this kind of app. If enough people disagree I'll look at an encrypted export, not a sync service.