CouchSSH

Your machines in your pocket.

A real terminal for your homelab, VPS, and laptop — with presence, keep-awake, E2E encryption, and sessions that survive sleep and network drops. Any CLI, any agent, any box.

Quickstart

npx couchssh

No login needed. On first run, cloudflared is downloaded and cached in ~/.couchssh/. Scan the QR with your phone; you're in a terminal.

Run it on every machine you own, then add them all in the phone client's machine switcher (⬡ button) — name, URL, token.

Want us to reach out about Pro/Teams plans when they ship? npx couchssh login opens a browser tab and links an email to this machine — no billing, no credit card, stays on the Free tier. Entirely optional.

Requirements

• Node.js 18+ on each machine
• A modern mobile browser — Chrome for Android or Safari on iOS

Docs

• Setup guide — step-by-step install for Windows, macOS, and Linux

Telemetry

The server sends an anonymous usage ping on start, every 30 minutes while running, and on shutdown. It contains: a random install ID (generated on your machine, stored in ~/.couchssh/telemetry.json), the couchssh version, your OS / CPU arch / Node version, your tier (free / pro / teams), how long the server has run, and how many terminal sessions were opened this run.

It does not send your hostname, IP, email, which account you are, tunnel URL, or anything you type. It exists only to tell whether the project is being used.

A one-time notice prints on the first run. Opt out any time — this is saved to ~/.couchssh/telemetry.json and survives couchssh service install:

couchssh opt-out     # turn it back on with: couchssh opt-in

Or set COUCHSSH_NO_TELEMETRY=1 in the environment (takes precedence). Check the current state with couchssh whoami.

Staying in touch

The pings above are anonymous, so we can't reach out. If you want to hear about major updates, leave an email (optional, one command, unsubscribe by replying):

couchssh show-interest              # prompts for an email
couchssh show-interest [email protected]  # or pass it directly

Feedback

Bug reports and feature requests are welcome — email [email protected].

Built for people with more machines than hands — homelabbers, self-hosters, and anyone babysitting long-running work from a phone.