A native Mac SFTP client

What you get

Dual-pane browser	Local and remote side by side; navigate, transfer and organize with drag-and-drop.
Remote editing	Open a remote file in a Mac editor; saving uploads it back to the server automatically.
SSH in the same window	Switch between the terminal and the SFTP browser per connection; watch several sessions in a grid.
Keys & security	Uses your Ed25519/ECDSA keys from ~/.ssh; passwords and passphrases go in the macOS Keychain.
Permissions	View and change remote file permissions (chmod) from the browser.

Why a native app matters

Noden is built with SwiftUI and notarized by Apple, so it feels like a Mac app and runs natively on Apple Silicon and Intel. You don't need a separate terminal and a separate FTP program — it's one focused tool for SSH and SFTP.

The parts that matter day to day

Dragging in and out of Finder. Files drop straight from a Finder window into the remote pane and back out again; there is no import step and no staging folder.

Editing without downloading. Open a remote file and it launches in your normal Mac editor. Save, and it uploads back automatically — which is the difference between fixing a config file in ten seconds and doing a download-edit-upload round trip.

The terminal is right there. Because the same connection carries an SSH session, you can run the command that produces a file and move the file without switching apps or re-authenticating. That is the whole reason to use a client that does both.

Permissions you can see. View and change remote file permissions (chmod) from the browser rather than remembering the octal in a shell.

The part that usually goes wrong: permissions

Most failed transfers are not transfer problems. Three checks, in order:

• Can your user write there at all? ls -ld /target/dir shows the owner and mode of the directory itself — you need write permission on the directory to create a file in it, regardless of the file's own mode.
• Is the parent path traversable? Every directory on the way needs execute (x) for your user. A single 750 directory owned by someone else stops the whole path.
• Are you hitting a quota or a read-only mount? Both report as a permission failure from the client side. df -h and mount on the server settle it.

If you need to write somewhere your login user cannot, the honest answer is that SFTP has no sudo. Transfer to a directory you own, then move the file with the terminal session on the same connection.

When a dedicated SFTP app is not what you want

• You only transfer files occasionally. scp and sftp ship with macOS and need no app at all.
• You need FTP, FTPS or WebDAV. Noden speaks SFTP over SSH only.
• You want to mount the server as a Finder volume. Noden gives you a dual-pane browser inside the app, not a mounted drive.

Troubleshooting

You want the file manager next to a terminal, not instead of it

Pop the file commander out into its own window — it stays open beside a terminal session rather than replacing it.

A whole folder needs to go across

Drag it in either direction; Noden recreates the directory tree and copies the files recursively.

You edit a remote config and the server does not see the change

Use Edit in place so Noden uploads the file automatically on save, instead of editing a local copy.

Install Noden on macOS

brew install --cask useroamteknoloji/tap/noden

Frequently asked questions

See also: Best SSH client for Mac · MobaXterm alternative · Termius alternative · Mac SSH client guide