Shprot v1.6

What's New

• Your language. The interface is translated into 49 languages and follows the system language.
• Tray menu at a glance. The menu shows whether the tunnel is open, and if not, why. The tunnel can be turned on and off right from the menu, and while it is open, the SOCKS5 and HTTP proxy addresses can be copied to the clipboard in one click.
• Start at Login can be turned off from the tray menu.
• Logs dialog shows recent records with live updates, so you no longer need to look for log files to see what is going on.
• About dialog with build information and licenses of Qt and its third-party components.

Windows

• Silent updates. A new version is installed over the old one without the uninstall question, the running app is closed, and only one Shprot entry remains in Apps & features. Entries left by version 1.5 and older are cleaned up too.
• The Start menu shortcut is removed on uninstall.
• Task Manager shows Shprot with its publisher.

Improvements

• Dialogs scale with the system font size and keep their width in all languages.
• Server key fingerprints stay on one line in trust dialogs.
• Log files are kept for 30 days.

Fixes

• Invalid HTTP proxy requests are logged correctly.

Full Changelog: v1.5...v1.6

Shprot v1.5

What's New

• Clear failure reasons. If the tunnel can't be opened, Shprot now tells you why: authentication failure, unknown server identity, connection refused, unreachable server, local port already in use, etc. The reason is shown in a notification (once per new reason, not on every retry) and in the tray icon tooltip.
• OpenSSH client check. Shprot warns if ssh or ssh-keygen is missing and explains how to install it. DEB and RPM packages now depend on the OpenSSH client.
• Network exposure warning. Saving a proxy address reachable from other computers (e.g. 0.0.0.0) now asks for confirmation, since the proxies have no authentication.

Improvements

• Server-friendly reconnection. The delay between reconnection attempts grows with each failure, and after authentication failures attempts are made rarely (from 1 up to 30 minutes apart), so a misconfigured key won't get your IP address banned by tools like fail2ban.
• More resilient SSH connection with keep-alive checks, a connection timeout, and a proper restart when the local proxy port can't be opened.
• HTTP proxy: all request methods are supported, requests are forwarded correctly (without Proxy-* headers), IPv6 addresses work, clients get proper error responses instead of hanging, and large downloads no longer consume memory without limit.

Security

• The settings file and temporary key files are readable by their owner only.
• On Linux, a running Shprot instance can be controlled only by its owner (and by root during uninstallation).

Packages

• Linux packages are about 25% smaller and no longer depend on OpenGL libraries.
• Each release now includes a SHA256SUMS file to verify downloads.

Fixes

• Windows: the tunnel process is now reliably stopped.
• Debug messages are no longer written to log files.
• A misbehaving local connection can no longer freeze the application for several seconds.

Full Changelog: v1.4...v1.5

Shprot v1.4

Fixes

• The tunnel now works when the user's profile path contains spaces (for example, C:\Users\John Smith). Previously SSH failed to find the key and known hosts files in such paths.

Full Changelog: v1.3...v1.4

Shprot v1.3

What's New

• Separate SSH port field. The server port now has its own field in Preferences instead of being typed after the address, which fixes problems with non-standard SSH ports.
• Safer Preferences dialog: it warns about unsaved changes, lets you reset edits, and remembers its size and position.
• Notifications toggle in the tray menu.
• Log files. Important messages are saved to log files to help diagnose problems.

Improvements

• More accurate status: the tray icon shows the tunnel as connected only after the proxy actually reaches the internet, and a just-started tunnel is given time to warm up before being considered failed.
• Isolated SSH authentication: Shprot uses only its own key and ignores your ~/.ssh/config, SSH agent and other keys, so personal SSH settings can't interfere with the tunnel.
• Improved private key editor in Preferences.
• Simplified Chinese README.

Fixes

• The tunnel process is properly stopped when the connection is closed, and Shprot shuts down cleanly on Linux.
• Windows: added a missing component needed to detect network changes.
• Linux: improved compatibility on Wayland desktops (Shprot runs through XWayland); fixed the installed size shown for DEB packages.

Full Changelog: v1.2...v1.3

Shprot v1.2

What's New

• Linux support. Shprot now runs on Linux, with packages for Ubuntu/Debian (DEB) and Fedora/RHEL/AlmaLinux (RPM).
• Local HTTP proxy. In addition to SOCKS5, Shprot can expose the tunnel as an HTTP proxy for applications that don't support SOCKS.

Improvements

• Double-clicking the tray icon opens the Preferences dialog.
• Invalid fields in the Preferences dialog are highlighted more clearly, along with other small UI polish.
• Windows installer build fixed and adjusted.

Full Changelog: v1.1...v1.2

Shprot v1.1

Improvements

• Multi-user systems: autostart now works for every user on the computer, not only the one who installed Shprot, and each user can run their own instance.
• About dialog now includes project links and copyright information.
• Private key field no longer accepts accidental line breaks that could corrupt the key.
• Slightly refined application icons.

Fixes

• Uninstallation no longer fails because of files locked by a running Shprot: the application is shut down gracefully first.

Full Changelog: v1.0...v1.1

Shprot v1.0

First Public Release

Shprot keeps an SSH tunnel to your server open in the background and exposes it as a local SOCKS5 proxy. This first release is for Windows 10/11 (64-bit).

• SSH tunnel as a local SOCKS5 proxy with configurable address and port.
• Automatic recovery: Shprot watches for network changes (switching Wi-Fi, waking from sleep) and restarts the tunnel when needed.
• Health checks: the proxy is periodically tested by opening popular websites through it, and a stalled tunnel is revived.
• Built-in SSH key generation — copy the public key into the server's authorized_keys and you're done.
• Tray icon status shows at a glance whether the tunnel is up.
• Windows installer.