Connecting

Open the connection form from either the + button on the Files sidebar's CONNECTIONS header or the pinned Open Connection button at the bottom. On macOS and Windows it opens as a dedicated window.

The form, field by field

The first control is the Protocol dropdown. The rest of the fields change to match the protocol you pick.

SFTP · FTP · FTPS

| Field | Notes | | --- | --- | | Server | Hostname or IP of the file server. | | Port | Prefilled with the protocol default — 22 for SFTP, 21 for FTP and FTPS. Change it only for non-standard ports. | | Username | The login user. | | Password | The login password or, for SFTP, your key passphrase. Stored in the Keychain when Save to Keychain is on. |

Note

SFTP host keys. The first time you connect to an SFTP server, Probe records its host key (trust on first use). If a server later presents a different key the connection is rejected — a safeguard against a man-in-the-middle on the SSH transport itself. Reconnecting can re-accept a changed key when you know the change is legitimate.

S3

| Field | Notes | | --- | --- | | Access Key | Your S3 access key id. | | Secret Key | The matching secret. This is the value stored in the Keychain. | | Bucket | The bucket to browse. | | Region | The bucket's region, e.g. ap-northeast-1. | | Endpoint | Optional. Leave blank for AWS S3. Set it to point at an S3-compatible store — MinIO, Cloudflare R2, Wasabi, or any custom S3 endpoint. |

Tip

S3 has no real directories — folders are a naming convention over flat object keys. Probe surfaces prefixes as folders, and creating a folder writes a hidden zero-byte keep-marker so the empty folder shows up. You never see the marker in listings, and it's removed when you delete the folder.

WebDAV

| Field | Notes | | --- | --- | | Base URL | The full DAV endpoint, including any path prefix — e.g. https://files.example.com/remote.php/dav. Nextcloud and ownCloud serve DAV under a long path prefix; paste the whole URL and Probe handles the rest. | | Username | Your DAV login. | | Password | Your DAV password (or app password). Stored in the Keychain. |

Credentials and security

Caution

Secrets go to the OS credential store, never to disk in plaintext. With Save to Keychain enabled, your password or S3 secret key is written to the macOS Keychain (or Windows Credential Manager), keyed by the bookmark. A saved bookmark on disk holds only the secret-free connection parameters — protocol, host, port, username, bucket, region, endpoint, base URL — plus a flag noting that a secret exists. Passwords and secret keys are never written to the bookmark file or to app preferences.

Credentials are also transient in the engine: they cross into Probe's Rust core once, at connect time, to open the session, and are not persisted there. This is why the automation surface has no connect endpoint — see Automation.

If you leave Save to Keychain unchecked, the connection still opens, but nothing is remembered — you'll re-enter the secret next time.

Bookmarks

Connecting saves a bookmark — a named entry that appears both as a card in the Open Connection form and as a row in the sidebar CONNECTIONS list. The bookmark name is derived from the most identifying field: the bucket for S3, the base URL for WebDAV, the host otherwise.

• Reconnect by clicking the bookmark row (sidebar) or card (form). If a session for it is already open, the click focuses that tab instead of opening a second one.
• Delete a bookmark from the trash icon on its card, or by right-clicking its sidebar row. Deleting a bookmark also removes its stored secret from the Keychain, and disconnects the session first if it's live.

Managing a live connection

Right-click a CONNECTIONS row for a live session to Disconnect it. A connection opened without saving a bookmark still gets a row while it's live, and offers only Disconnect — there's nothing persistent to delete.

Where to go next

Browsing & Transfers Navigate, sort, transfer, and manage files once you're connected.

Automation (REST & MCP) Operate on open connections from the REST API and MCP tools.