Connections and profiles

The Connect dialog handles both full remote sessions and remote filesystems mounted in a pane.

Connect dialog

Press Mod + Shift + R, then select a transport and target. Use Open as a new session to choose the result:

• enabled: open a complete remote session in a new window;
• disabled: mount the target’s filesystem in the active pane.

Newt defaults to a new window from a local session and a pane mount from a remote session. The latter is useful when connecting from a server to one of its containers or Kubernetes pods.

Connect uses the current form without saving it. Save stores a profile without connecting; it is also available with Mod + S. The first Save… action reveals a suggested profile name. Save again, or press Enter in the name field, to persist it. This leaves the dialog open so you can save and then connect.

Saved profiles

Connection profiles live in connections.toml inside Newt’s platform-specific configuration directory.

Profiles can store SSH targets, Docker and Podman containers, Kubernetes pods, custom commands, S3 mounts, and SFTP mounts. A profile also remembers whether it should open in a window or a pane. Secrets are stored in the operating system’s credential store rather than in this file.

WSL distributions are discovered from Windows and are not saved as profiles.

Opening an existing profile in its dialog updates that profile when you save, even if you rename it. Connecting from the edited form is a one-off and does not modify the saved profile.

Quick Connect

Press Ctrl + R to open Quick Connect. It combines saved profiles with recently used ad-hoc connections. Start typing to filter, use the arrow keys to choose a target, and press Enter to connect.

Quick Connect honors the profile’s window-or-pane setting. Recent ad-hoc connections keep the choice used when they were opened.

Press F4, or select the pencil, to edit an entry before connecting. A recent connection can be promoted to a saved profile this way. Deleting an entry removes a profile or forgets a recent connection after confirmation.

S3, SFTP, and pane-mounted connections open their matching dialog and connect through it, so progress and errors remain visible and a failed connection can be edited and retried. Recent S3 connections never retain access keys. An IAM-user recent therefore waits for you to enter its keys; a saved IAM-user profile reads them from the operating system’s credential store.

Transport notes

SSH

SSH connections use your system SSH client. Host aliases, keys, proxy jumps, agents, and other options in ~/.ssh/config continue to apply. Newt displays password, passphrase, and host-key prompts inside the application.

SSH sessions use the target account’s login environment by default, so commands, terminals, and target discovery see the same paths you would normally receive after logging in.

Docker and Podman

Choose a running container and, optionally, a user. The default mode copies and starts the agent directly and works in images without a shell. A bootstrap mode is available for environments where retaining a cached agent inside the container is preferable.

Kubernetes

Choose a context, namespace, pod, and optional container. Newt uses kubectl exec; kubectl must be installed and configured in the environment from which the connection is made.

Custom command

A custom connection runs a command through the platform shell. Use $NEWT_BOOTSTRAP in the command where the target should receive Newt’s bootstrap script. This can cover tools such as nsenter, sandbox launchers, or an SSH invocation with unusual routing.

Connections inside remote sessions

Connections always originate from the current session. In an SSH session, container discovery runs on the SSH host, SFTP uses that host’s SSH configuration, and S3 uses its AWS configuration. This rule also applies to saved profiles.