Managing connections

The library

The sidebar has All Connections, Favorites and your own groups. Use the search field (⌘F) to filter by connection name or host.

Each connection appears as a card showing its host, account, display mode and current status. The card’s buttons change with the session state: Connect, Show, Disconnect or Reconnect.

• Add a connection with ⌘N, and edit the selected one with ⌘E.
• Duplicate or delete a connection from its context menu or the Connection menu.
• Create a group with ⇧⌘N, rename one with ⇧⌘E and delete one with ⇧⌘Delete.
• Star a connection to add it to Favorites.

Several sessions at once

You can run many sessions at once. Connecting to a computer that already has a session open brings that session forward instead of starting a second one.

With an enhanced client, you can turn on device thumbnails in Settings → General to see a live preview on each card. Thumbnails come straight from the engine, are kept in memory only, and don’t need Screen Recording permission.

The default template

New connections start from a template. Open Settings → General → Edit Default Template… to set the defaults, including:

• port and account names,
• display mode, monitor selection and scaling,
• clipboard, audio and shared folders,
• UDP or TCP preference, timeouts and reconnect limits,
• advanced FreeRDP options.

Choose Save defaults in the editor, then Save in Settings. New connections get their own copy, so editing the template doesn’t change connections you’ve already saved.

Advanced options

In a connection’s Advanced tab, you can enter extra FreeRDP options, one per entry. These are passed as arguments, not shell commands. You can’t override options the app manages itself or options that supply secrets.

Where connections are stored

Connections are saved in ~/Library/Application Support/Sheltie/profiles.json. App preferences live next to it in preferences.json. Passwords are never stored in either file.