A Mac terminal built for working on servers

Native on Apple Silicon and Intel

Shellium is a Qt/C++ application with separate builds for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, not an Electron wrapper. Its terminal is built on libvterm, so full-screen programs such as vim, htop and tmux, 256-colour and true-colour output, and wide CJK characters all render correctly.

Everything for SSH in one window

• Local shell tabs and SSH sessions side by side, with broadcast input across a workspace.
• A host tree with groups, tags and search, plus import from ~/.ssh/config.
• An SFTP pane that follows nested ssh: run ssh inside a session and the file manager moves to that server.
• Jump-host chains and -L / -R / -D port forwarding with saved rules and traffic stats.
• An optional AI assistant using your own OpenAI-compatible endpoint; every command that changes the system asks you first.

Mac-style keyboard shortcuts

• ⌘K — run a snippet in the current terminal
• ⌘J — run a command from history
• ⇧⌘F — search hosts in the sidebar, Enter to connect
• ⇧⌘O — show or hide the remote file manager
• ⇧⌘R — reset the terminal after cat-ing a binary file

Themes that stay readable

Shellium follows the macOS light and dark appearance, bundles several monospace fonts, and every theme ships a full 16-colour ANSI palette — so ls, git diff and compiler output stay legible whichever theme you pick.

Shellium, Terminal.app or iTerm2?

If you mostly work in a local shell, the built-in Terminal and iTerm2 are both excellent. Shellium is for people whose work happens on remote machines: it keeps hosts, credentials, file transfers and tunnels together, and always knows which server each tab is on.

Install on macOS

1. Download the .dmg for Apple Silicon (macOS 26 or later) or Intel (macOS 15 or later).
2. Open it and drag Shellium into Applications.
3. Builds are not notarized yet, so on first launch right-click Shellium and choose Open — or run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Shellium.app in Terminal.

Frequently asked questions

Is Shellium free on Mac?

Yes. It is free with no paid tiers, and open source under the Apache License 2.0.

Does it run natively on Apple Silicon (M-series) Macs?

Yes. There is a native arm64 build for Apple Silicon and a separate x86_64 build for Intel Macs.

Which macOS versions are supported?

The Apple Silicon build needs macOS 26 or later. The Intel build needs macOS 15 or later.

Why does macOS say Shellium can't be opened?

Release builds are ad-hoc signed and not yet notarized by Apple, so Gatekeeper blocks the first launch. Right-click the app and choose Open, or remove the quarantine attribute with xattr. Each release publishes SHA-256 checksums you can verify the download against.

Can I use it as my everyday local terminal?

Yes. Shellium opens local tabs running your login shell, alongside SSH sessions in the same window.