SSH Watchdog

Monitor and manage active SSH sessions in the GNOME top bar.

extensions.gnome.org

Features

• Top-bar indicator with live SSH session count.
• Dropdown menu listing active SSH sessions (user, TTY, remote IPv4/IPv6).
• Optional per-session connection and disconnection alerts.
• Optional per-session termination controls in the dropdown menu (disabled by default).
• Session termination flow: End -> Confirm -> ending... with cancel support.
• Non-terminable sessions (different local user) show a lock indicator instead of an actionable control.
• Session-row field toggles for user, TTY, and remote IP.
• Configurable refresh interval (1 to 60 seconds).
• Appearance toggles for icon and SSH: label prefix.
• Menu refresh when opened, in addition to interval polling.

Screenshots

Connection Notification (With Active Sessions)	Confirm Session Termination

Idle State (No Active Sessions)	Preferences

Compatibility

• GNOME Shell 45 through 50.
• Uses local who output as the SSH session data source.

Runtime Requirements

• who available in PATH
• Active SSH logins represented in who output
• pkill available in PATH (only required when session termination controls are enabled)

Preferences (Defaults)

• Refresh interval: 10 seconds (range 1-60).
• Show icon: true.
• Show SSH prefix: true.
• Show connection alerts: true.
• Show disconnection alerts: true.
• Enable session termination: false.
• Show user in session rows: true.
• Show TTY in session rows: true.
• Show remote IP in session rows: true.

Privacy and Data Handling

• No telemetry.
• No outbound network calls.
• Session information is derived locally from the system who command output.

Known Limitations

• If a session is not reported by who, it will not appear in the extension.
• Entries where who reports only hostnames (not IP addresses) are ignored.
• Connect/disconnect notifications start after the first polling baseline is established.
• Notifications are delivered through GNOME Shell's system notification source.
• Session termination controls only apply to sessions for the currently logged-in user.
• Session controls are shown only when Enable Session Termination is enabled in preferences.

Support

• Report issues: https://github.com/MiguelRegueiro/ssh-watchdog/issues
• For diagnostics, collect GNOME Shell logs with:

journalctl -f -o cat /usr/bin/gnome-shell

Documentation

• Changelog: CHANGELOG.md

Project Layout

• extension/extension.js: main extension runtime, notifications, and session actions.
• extension/prefs.js: Adwaita preferences UI.
• extension/schemas/org.gnome.shell.extensions.ssh-watchdog.gschema.xml: GSettings schema.
• extension/metadata.json: extension metadata (UUID, shell compatibility, version).
• extension/stylesheet.css: extension styles.
• LICENSE: project license (GPL-3.0-or-later).

License

This project is licensed under GPL-3.0-or-later. See LICENSE.