Transferring files

Ctrl-t on a host opens a dual-pane transfer screen: your local files on one side, the host’s on the other. Mark what you want and send it in either direction over SFTP, with fuzzy search on both sides, live progress, and a F7 to create directories without leaving.

sshelf authenticates once: it opens an ssh ControlMaster that reuses the host’s normal auth (keys/agent/ProxyJump, or the stored password, supplied the same way as on connect) and runs sftp over it. No per-file re-prompts, and ~/.ssh/config is never touched. Remote listing and transfers run on a background thread, so the UI stays responsive on slow links.

Keys

Marking and sending several at once

Space marks the entry under the cursor; marked rows get a • and the accent color, and the pane title counts them. Ctrl-s then sends all of them, files and folders alike and folders recursively, into the other pane’s current directory, one at a time through the same single authenticated connection. The progress line counts through the batch (2 of 5 report.pdf → deploy@host).

• Marks are positional. Changing directory, refreshing a listing, or a listing error drops them; they are never remembered per path. Esc clears them explicitly.
• Sending consumes the marks; the queue becomes the record of what’s going.
• An entry the destination already has is skipped and the queue carries on; the summary names what was passed over (sent 3 of 4 · skipped dup.txt (already there)). A real transfer failure stops the rest, since whatever broke will usually break the next one too, and the status says how many were left unsent.
• Space marks rather than typing a space into the filter. Filenames containing spaces still match by the rest of their name.

Creating a directory (F7)

F7 (or Ctrl-f, if your terminal keeps F7 for itself) opens a one-line input at the bottom of the focused pane. Type a name, Enter creates it in that pane’s current directory, Esc cancels. It works on both sides; the remote one goes through the same SFTP connection.

The name must be a single directory name: no / (this creates one directory, not a path), no control characters, not . or .., and not a name that already exists. An existing directory is never adopted, so the input stays open with an error and you can pick another name. On success the listing refreshes and the new directory lands under the cursor.

Hidden files

Both panes list hidden entries. The local pane always did; the remote one lists with ls -la through sftp, so dotfiles and dot-directories show up on the server side too and you can open .config or .ssh the same way you open any other directory. . and .. are never listed on either side (← goes up).

There is no show/hide toggle. If a directory has too much in it, type a . into the pane filter: that keeps the names with a dot in them, and the hidden ones sort to the top.

Behavior & limits

• Directories are shown as name/ and symlinks as name@, and symlinks are skipped.
• A same-named file or folder already present in the destination is skipped (with a message), never overwritten.
• One transfer runs at a time: a batch is a queue, not parallel copies. Single-file downloads show bytes + percent; folders and uploads show as in-flight (cancelable with Esc, which abandons the rest of the queue too).
• Filenames are shell-quoted (spaces are fine) and control characters are stripped from display.
• The connection uses StrictHostKeyChecking=accept-new, like connect: a first-time host key is trusted on first use, a changed key still hard-fails. See Security.
• Renaming, deleting, changing permissions, and overwriting are not in this version.

Debugging a failing transfer

The status line shows the underlying sftp error. For the full story:

sshelf --transfer-log /tmp/sshelf-transfer.log     # or $SSHELF_TRANSFER_LOG

This appends every ssh/sftp command and its stderr to the file. No secrets are logged: passwords reach ssh via SSH_ASKPASS, never the command line.