ITerm2 is a complete Terminal replacement. If you’re familiar with Terminal and have some complaints about it, or feel it has some limitations, iTerm2 is the SSH client for you. It might make sense to just use Terminal rather than downloading a totally separate application for the same basic functions.īut if you know PuTTY from Windows, or really want your login and session information saved, PuTTY for Mac is great, and we’d still recommend it.

Ultimately, though, PuTTY for Mac works much like Terminal in terms of operation and what actions it can perform. This saves a lot of time when logging in and switching between remote computers. You can also use PuTTY for Mac to save your SSH session information-the IP address and port number you’re logging into. The GUI has options for saving your SSH login information, so you don’t have to keep passwords written down everywhere to remember them. PuTTY for Mac has a graphical user interface (GUI) that you can log in with instead of using the Terminal windows. So PuTTY for Mac isn’t necessary to make an SSH connection or run command line on a Mac, but it does come with features that make it useful as an SSH client on Macs. Unlike Unix-based Macs, Windows doesn’t have Terminal built into it.

PuTTY for Mac, like Windows PuTTY, allows for SSH connections by creating Terminal windows that run command line inputs for logging into and using remote computers. PuTTY is a Windows application for connecting to SSH servers that has a Mac port. Plus, it’s free, and already on your Mac! For us, an SSH client would have to be very impressive to beat it. But if you do have some background in these areas, you should be fine. If you don’t know a ton about coding, or haven’t used Terminal much before, it might be a tough SSH client to use. We have a Mac Terminal commands cheat sheet if you need ideas or reminders of what you can input and run via command line in Terminal. There is no graphical system for this-Terminal is text based-so you type out your commands and hit Enter to access, run, and make changes on another system. With Terminal open, you can log into a remote computer via an SSH connection by inputting ssh where user is replaced with your username for the system, and IP-Address is replaced with the IP address of the remote server.įrom there you can input commands to access files and run programs on the other computer.

This application is Terminal, which you can usually find by heading to your Applications folder and looking inside Utilities, though there are a few ways to open Terminal on a Mac. You Mac comes with an application that will let you access and run SSH built into it.

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