Yes. Pane is open source under AGPL-3.0, with no paid tier needed for remote access.

Do I still need an SSH client?

Not to work on the machine. Keep your terminal emulator if you like it; Pane runs alongside it.

Does anything go through Pane's servers?

No. The host runs everything, and clients connect to it directly over your tailnet or SSH.

Which operating systems work as the host?

macOS, Windows (including WSL) and Linux.

Remote access

Use your computer from anywhere, not just its shell

You have a machine that does the real work. It might be a Mac mini under the desk, a Windows tower, a Linux box in a closet or a VM in the cloud. And you want to use it from somewhere else: your laptop on the couch, a work PC, your phone on the train.

The usual answer is an SSH client. That gets you a shell. Then you need a second tool for files, a third to reach the dev server it's running, and none of them know about your branches or the coding agents you left running.

Pane gives you the whole machine instead. Pane is free and open source (AGPL-3.0), and it runs on macOS, Windows and Linux.

What you get

Terminals on the host, from any desktop or from your phone's browser.
Files: browse, open and edit the host's files from wherever you are.
Dev servers at localhost: a server running on the host opens at the same localhost address on your laptop, with live reload.
Your agents: Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or any CLI agent keeps running on the host, and you watch and steer it from any device. Phones show live status and when an agent needs input.
Your own view on every device: switching tabs on your phone doesn't move the tab on your laptop.

Set it up in five minutes

Install Pane on the machine that does the work (the host).
- Mac or Linux: curl -fsSL https://runpane.com/install.sh | sh
- Windows (PowerShell): irm https://runpane.com/install.ps1 | iex
On the host, open Settings → Remote Access → Connection codes → Set Up Host and copy the pane-remote:// connection code.
On another computer: install Pane, open Settings → Remote Access → Your computers, paste the code under Add with a Code, and connect.
On a phone or tablet: install Tailscale and sign in to the same tailnet as the host, then open runpane.com/app and paste the same code.

For a headless server or VM, run npx --yes runpane@latest in its terminal and choose Set up this machine as a remote host.

Tailscale or SSH

By default the connection runs over Tailscale, which reaches your machine from anywhere without opening ports on your router. If you'd rather use SSH, set up the host with:

npx --yes runpane@latest install daemon --label "My Server" --prefer-tunnel ssh

Pane prints the SSH forwarding command to run on your desktop. This path is for desktop clients: a phone can't reach a tunnel that ends on your laptop, so phones connect over Tailscale.

Sources

Corrections

If anything here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we'll fix it and update the date at the top. Open an issue on GitHub

Sources

frequently asked questions

Download*

Windows SmartScreen warningDirect downloads can show a SmartScreen warning while Pane is unsigned. Pane is fully open source, so you can audit the code and build from source yourself.1. Click More info2. Click Run anyway3. Continue the installerThe PowerShell install downloads the official release directly and avoids most browser download friction.npm global install

Paste that in PowerShell.Linux

By Parsa Khazaeepoul, co-founder of Pane. Last reviewed October 2026.