Install

Requirements

Requirement	Version
macOS	26.0 or newer, tested on macOS 26.5 Tahoe
SSH	A working host alias in ~/.ssh/config
Build tools (only to build from source)	Xcode Command Line Tools, Swift 6.3

Download

Download the latest DMG from GitHub Releases, mount it, and drag SSHTunnel.app to Applications.

Opening the GitHub DMG on macOS 26

Un-notarized build

Release DMGs are ad-hoc signed, not notarized. Notarization requires an Apple Developer ID certificate and CI signing secrets the project does not have yet, so macOS Gatekeeper quarantines the downloaded app. On macOS 26 (Tahoe) the older right-click → Open workaround may no longer be enough for apps downloaded from GitHub.

To open the release build:

1. Download the DMG from GitHub Releases.
2. Mount the DMG and drag SSHTunnel.app to /Applications.
3. Try to open /Applications/SSHTunnel.app once. macOS will block it.
4. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security.
5. In the Security section, click Open Anyway for SSHTunnel.app.
6. Confirm the warning and enter your password if macOS asks for it.

Apple documents this manual override in Open an app by overriding security settings.

If the Open Anyway button does not appear, remove the quarantine attribute from Terminal after copying the app to /Applications:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/SSHTunnel.app
open /Applications/SSHTunnel.app

Locally built apps (make install) are not quarantined and open normally.

Build from source

Prefer building yourself? SSH Tunnel is a SwiftPM package with a Makefile:

git clone https://github.com/christestet/ssh-tunnel.git
cd ssh-tunnel
make install   # builds SSHTunnel.app and copies it to /Applications

Install the command line tools first if needed:

xcode-select --install

See Build & Test for all targets.

Staying up to date

The app checks GitHub Releases for a newer version automatically, at most once per 24 hours. When a newer release exists, an Update available banner appears in the menu and a notification is posted; both open the release page so you can download the new DMG and drag it to Applications. Because the app is un-notarized, updates are always installed manually — there is no silent self-update. See Updates for details.