FAQ

Common questions.

Accounts, pricing, sync, privacy and downloads — answered here. Still stuck? Ask in the feedback community.

Accounts and sign-in
Do I need an account to use CloverTerm?
No. Local features do not depend on an account at all: terminal, SFTP, live monitoring and snippets work on install. Signing in is only needed for account features — today that means the feedback community, later hosted sync and purchases.
How does signing in work?
Through browser sign-in: the app opens the website, you sign in there and confirm this device in one click, the website hands a one-time callback code back to the app, and the app exchanges it for a session. The code expires in five minutes. The whole flow happens in a popover; closing it does not cancel anything.
What happens to my device after I sign in?
Before you sign in, our servers know this device only through anonymous usage statistics and error reports. After you sign in and confirm it on the website, it joins your account’s device list — and only then carries a device name. Both are the same device at two stages, not two things. See the privacy policy.
Free, Pro and Cloud
What is the difference between Pro and Cloud?
Pro is professional features that work installed on your computer and phone, bought once. Cloud is services that need our servers running for you all the time (hosted sync, and Guardian later), to be sold separately as an annual subscription. They are independent: Pro does not require Cloud, and Cloud will not require Pro. Only Pro is on sale today — see the pricing page.
After I buy Pro, do features added later count?
Yes. Pro covers local features — the ones there today and the ones added later — bought once, never charged again per version. A feature that does not go through our servers will never be taken out of Pro; a feature that does will never be sold inside Pro. Pro from a trial or redemption code is counted in days; when it expires the whole of Pro stops, and Free features and your data are unaffected. See the pricing page and the terms.
Can I use the Free edition commercially?
Yes. The Free edition may be used in personal and commercial settings, with no limit on devices, seats or purpose, and no sign-in; the only restrictions are no decompiling and no redistributing the installers. What Free includes is on the pricing page; the exact wording is in the terms.
Self-hosted sync
Is self-hosted sync genuinely free forever?
Yes — it is a core promise. The backend is your own private GitHub or Gitee repository; the bandwidth and storage are on your account, we never handle the data, and there is no device limit.
Is it secure? What ends up in the repository?
Hosts, credentials, SSH keys and snippets are packed into a snapshot locally and encrypted with AES-256 before anything is pushed — the key is derived on your device from your Sync Password via Argon2id. The repository holds ciphertext only; neither GitHub, Gitee nor anyone else can read it. Access tokens stay in your system’s secure storage.
What if I forget the Sync Password?
It cannot be recovered — that is the cost of end-to-end encryption: the key exists only on your devices. If any device is still signed in, reset the Sync Password there; otherwise restore from a local rollback point and set sync up again.
How are sync conflicts handled?
Conflicts only arise when both sides changed and cannot be merged automatically. The dialog offers three choices: keep local, keep remote, or keep both (the remote content is merged in, which can create duplicates). A rollback point is saved automatically before any full restore from the cloud — the last three are kept — so a wrong choice is recoverable in one click.
Privacy and data
Do you upload my hosts and credentials?
No. Host configuration lives in a local database; credentials (passwords, private keys, access tokens) go only into system secure storage (Keychain on macOS and iOS, DPAPI on Windows, Keystore on Android). Unless you turn on self-hosted sync — and even then the data is encrypted and pushed to your own repository, never through our servers.
So what does the app report anywhere else?
Two things, neither containing any host data: usage statistics (platform, app version and distribution channel on each launch, anonymous per device, used to count active devices) and error reports (unhandled errors inside the app: version, platform, error type, the redacted first line of the message and stack frames from our own code — no logs; crashes and freezes are not covered). Your device appears in your account’s device list only after you sign in and confirm it. Item by item in the privacy policy.
Can I turn those off?
Yes. Usage statistics and error reports share one switch in settings. Turning it off stops both completely and changes nothing about local features.
Downloads and updates
Which platforms and architectures are supported?
All five at launch: macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel), Windows (x64), Linux (x86_64 and arm64), iOS / iPadOS, and Android. Exact requirements are on the download page.
How do I know the installer I downloaded is official?
Download only from the official domains cloverterm.cn and cloverterm.com, and on iOS from the App Store; do not install packages from any other site. The download page lists a SHA-256 checksum next to every installer — compute it yourself after downloading, and a match means the package is official. Installer signing and other things you can verify yourself are covered on the security page.
Can I try new features early?
Install a beta: desktop betas sit below the stable build on the download page (version numbers carry a -beta.N suffix), and iOS goes through TestFlight or Ad Hoc. Betas prove a feature out before it is promoted. Problems are welcome in the feedback community.
Why did a version suddenly stop working?
That is a retired version: an exact version is retired only when a security vulnerability has been disclosed in it, and the app then shows a full-screen "update now" on launch. We force no other upgrade, and a version file we cannot read never counts as retired.

// More detail in the docs; data commitments in the privacy policy