PuTTY for Mac: 5 Free Alternative SSH Clients to Use
If you are the owner or the manager of a website, or a sysadmin, for that matter; you must have heard of (and probably used) PuTTY, at least once. While moving from Windows to Mac is mostly an exciting, and positive change, if you did use PuTTY, you will find yourself stranded in the dark, as there is no PuTTY support on Mac.
I, myself, don’t SSH into my website, and hence don’t really mind the absence of PuTTY. However, it does pose a problem to many people who use PuTTY and have only recently made the switch to Mac. Well, we have compiled a list of 5 free PuTTY alternatives that should let you SSH into a remote server:
1. Terminal
The Terminal app is the default CLI that comes bundled with the Mac, and is a rather powerful tool, in case you didn’t know. You can use the Terminal to SSH into a remote server, provided, obviously, that you have the valid login credentials.
Here’s a short example of how you can use the Terminal to SSH into a web-server. I’m using my website’s hosting server for illustration purposes. All you will need to do, is change the server name to your server and use your login credentials.
1. Launch Terminal.
2. Use the following command to connect to your web server using SSH:
ssh server_name -p port_number -l login_id
- In my case, the command becomes:
ssh server208.web-hosting.com -p 21098 -l my_username
3. You will be prompted to enter your password. The typing will be hidden for security purposes.
4. Once you have entered the login password, hit Enter, and you will be connected via SSH. You can now run shell commands on your server.
2. iTerm2
iTerm2 is a Terminal replacement for Mac with a plethora of added features that the default Terminal app doesn’t offer. Notable among the various features that iTerm2 offers are:
- Support for split-windows: Multiple independent terminals in the same tab.
- Support for Annotation: Add notes and comments to shell commands that have been run.
- Instant Playback: This feature plays back a history of everything you have done on iTerm2, in case you forgot to copy a number or some detail from older commands.
- Better search: Searching on iTerm2 highlights all the matches for the word, like Safari and Chrome do.
- Mouseless Copy: You don’t need to use the mouse to copy or paste text, anymore!
There are a lot of other features that are offered by iTerm2. You can read about them on their official website. The process to SSH into a web server using iTerm2 is exactly the same as the process in Terminal, except, iTerm2 will make your life easier inside the Terminal.