LinkTerm

A powerful WebSocket-based terminal sharing tool that allows you to securely expose and share your terminal (TTY) over any network, even through firewalls and NATs. The server runs on Linux, macOS, Windows (via ConPTY), FreeBSD and other Unix-like systems.

Quick Start

Share your terminal through any network/firewall:

# On the server (machine sharing the terminal):
linkterm server

# On the client (machine accessing the terminal):
linkterm client -t <CONNECTOR_TOKEN>

How it works:

1. The server connects to the relay anonymously. The relay assigns a temporary identity (server token) which the server saves and uses to reconnect with, so the same relay is reused across reconnects.

2. The server then registers a connector token. Without -t, a random one is generated and printed - use that on the client:

   INF Connected to LinkSocks server
   INF Connect with: linkterm client -t 3a8b4dfe5e605e01
   

   # On the client (machine accessing the terminal):
   linkterm client -t 3a8b4dfe5e605e01
   

This method works everywhere - no port forwarding or firewall configuration needed!

For additional security you can use a custom token on both sides:

# Server:
linkterm server -t YOUR_TOKEN

# Client:
linkterm client -t YOUR_TOKEN

You should use a complex token in this case, as anyone holding the token can connect to your terminal:

openssl rand -hex 16

The connection is proxied via our public relay: https://l.zetx.tech. You can also host your own relay on Cloudflare Workers: linksocks/linksocks.js

Direct Connection Mode

For local network or when you have direct access:

Server:

# Host server at 8273
./linkterm server --port 8273 --host localhost

Client:

# Connect to local server
./linkterm client --url ws://localhost:8273

TUI Client (tmux-like)

The client uses a full-screen terminal UI by default (similar to tmux) when stdout is a terminal: a content area renders the remote terminal, a bottom status bar shows the host, latency and relay state, and a log panel can be toggled open. Use --no-tui to force the plain console mode (this also happens automatically when stdout is not a terminal, e.g. in a pipe).

# default: TUI on a terminal
./linkterm client --url ws://localhost:8273

# plain console mode
./linkterm client --no-tui --url ws://localhost:8273

Layout (top to bottom):

+---------------------------------------------+
|  content area: the remote terminal          |
|  or the fullscreen log panel (F2 toggles)   |
+---------------------------------------------+
|  ● host | Latency 12ms |  F2 Logs F3 Quit   |
+---------------------------------------------+

The status bar shows (left to right) a connection dot, the remote host or connection state, the link latency, and the clickable hotkey hints. The dot is amber while connecting, green when connected, and red when the connection failed or is disconnected, in which case the status text shows Connection failed / Disconnected plus the reason and the latency is hidden.

The TUI opens immediately and the link connection runs inside it: while the relay handshake and the terminal dial are in progress the status bar shows Connecting to <host>..., every client log line lands in the F2 panel in real time (colour-coded by level), and a failed connection keeps the TUI alive so you can read the logs before quitting with F3 (which exits with a non-zero code and prints a concise error on stderr).

Keys:

Key	Action
F2	toggle the fullscreen log panel (all client logs land here, with zerolog timestamps and colour-coded levels)
F3 / Ctrl+Q	quit the TUI
mouse wheel	rewind the content scrollback; scrolls the log panel when it is open
left mouse drag (log panel)	select log text; long lines wrap to the panel width
Ctrl+C (log panel)	copy the selected text through the terminal clipboard (OSC 52)
PgUp / PgDn (log panel)	scroll the log panel by one page
Esc / g (while rewound)	jump back to the live screen

Clicking the F2 Logs / F3 Quit text in the status bar works the same as pressing the keys. All other keys are forwarded to the remote terminal as usual; logs are routed into the log panel instead of stdout. Log entries use the same zerolog console layout as plain mode (timestamp level message), with timestamps dimmed and level markers colour-coded.

If the terminal WebSocket drops, the TUI keeps the last screen, shows a red Disconnected status and automatically reconnects with exponential backoff, restoring the session when the link recovers. The relay state is appended to the host (disconnected / reconnecting) when the terminal stays up but the link relay link drops.

Note: a connector token is validated by the relay (at least 8 characters and not a trivial pattern like abc123). If you pass an explicit weak -t to the server, it exits immediately with an error instead of silently swapping in a random token, so the client can never end up with a mismatched identity.

Installation

LinkTerm can be installed by:

go install github.com/linksocks/linkterm/cmd/linkterm@latest

You can also download pre-built binaries for your architecture from the releases page.

LinkTerm is also available via Docker:

docker run --rm -it jackzzs/linkterm --help

License

MIT