Ldap Studio

🔍 A native macOS LDAP client, with a Rust-powered backend, for browsing, searching, and editing LDAP directories.

Screenshots

Why I Made This

I use LDAP at CBPF, the research center I work at. The only real LDAP client available was LDAP Admin for Windows, which hasn't been updated in a long time and is Windows-only, meaning I needed a Windows virtual machine running just to open it. So I built my own, native to macOS.

⚠️ I also wanted to learn Swift and Rust. I'm still learning both, so this app was built with the help of AI.

Installation

1. Download the latest release from the Releases page, e.g. ldap-studio-vx.x.x.zip.
2. Extract the zip and move ldap-studio.app to your /Applications folder.
3. Since this app isn't signed with a paid Apple Developer account, macOS will say it's from an unidentified developer (or "not trusted") the first time you open it.
   • Go to System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to the bottom, and click Open Anyway.
   • If it still won't open, run this in Terminal:

     xattr -cr /Applications/ldap-studio.app

Features

• Save, edit, and organize multiple LDAP connections
• Import/export connections as JSON (with an optional, obscured password) or from LDAP Admin's .lcf format
• Full directory tree browsing, with live filtering and real LDAP filter (RFC 4515) advanced search
• Add, edit, view, and delete attributes, including binary values
• View and set photos (jpegPhoto), auto-resized and center-cropped to 300×300
• Set passwords (userPassword) with client-side hashing (PBKDF2-SHA512 by default, plus Unix/MD5/SHA-256/SHA-512 Crypt, MD5, SHA1, SMD5, and SSHA for compatibility); the plaintext is never stored or sent as-is
• Move, copy, create, and delete entries anywhere in the tree
• Import and export LDIF files
• Schema browser: object classes and attributes, with full superior-class inheritance resolved
• Autocomplete for attribute names and object classes when adding attributes or creating entries, driven by the server's own schema
• Native macOS menu bar integration for every major action

Built With

• SwiftUI for the native macOS interface
• Rust for the LDAP backend, bridged to Swift via uniffi
• ldap3 for the LDAP protocol implementation
• image for photo processing
• RustCrypto's pbkdf2/sha2/md-5/sha1 and crypt3_rs for the password hashing schemes

Requirements

• macOS 26 (Tahoe) or later
• Apple Silicon (arm64); there's currently no Intel build

License

MIT