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Svyatoslav Pavlov
Svyatoslav Pavlov

Posted on Originally published at termal.in on

Leaving MobaXterm: take your sessions and keys to macOS or Linux

#mobaxterm #ssh #migration #tutorial

Where MobaXterm stores bookmarks and keys, how to export them, and how to land the whole setup in a cross-platform client — plus when to stay.

MobaXterm earned its following. On Windows it's the Swiss Army knife: tabbed terminal, a real X server, SFTP browser docked beside every shell, and a pile of bundled Unix tools that mean you rarely reach for anything else. If you live on Windows and lean on the X server, you may not need to leave at all — this guide will even tell you when to stay.

But two itches send people looking. One is the platform wall: MobaXterm is Windows-only, so the day you pick up a Mac or a Linux box, your whole setup stays behind. The other is the opposite of its strength — some people want a fast, focused SSH client, not a toolbox that does everything. Either way, getting out with your sessions, keys and habits intact is a smaller job than it looks. It's written with Termalin as the destination, but the first half applies to any modern client.

Know where MobaXterm keeps your stuff

MobaXterm calls saved sessions bookmarks, and where they live depends on which edition you run:

  • Installer edition — in the Windows registry, under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Mobatek\MobaXterm.
  • Portable edition — in a MobaXterm.ini file sitting next to the .exe. That single file is your whole configuration, which is why the portable build travels on a USB stick.
  • Private keys — wherever you saved them. MobaXterm works with standard OpenSSH keys and with PuTTY's .ppk, and it ships MobaKeyGen (a PuTTYgen clone) for making and converting them.
  • Saved passwords — in MobaXterm's own credential store, protected by its master password. These do not export in plaintext, by design — you'll re-enter them once in the new client.

Step 1 — export the sessions

The portable, any-OS route: open the Sessions sidebar, right-click the top User sessions node, and choose Export sessions to write a .mxtsessions file (it's plain text — you can open it and read your inventory). That file is what an importer consumes on a Mac or Linux box where the registry doesn't exist.

In Termalin, open the hosts list's import menu and paste that file or load it — the portable edition's MobaXterm.ini works too. Bookmarks arrive with their folders, as regular hosts you can sort, tag and colour-label. (The same importer also takes an ~/.ssh/config, a CSV, or a PuTTY .reg export, and on Windows it can read saved PuTTY sessions straight from the registry, if your setup is a mix.)

Step 2 — bring the keys

Here MobaXterm users are usually in good shape, because MobaXterm already speaks OpenSSH. If your keys are OpenSSH-format id_ed25519 / id_rsa files, just import them into the new client — done.

If some keys are in PuTTY's .ppk format (common if you migrated into MobaXterm from PuTTY years ago), convert them once: open MobaKeyGen, Load the .ppk, and Export OpenSSH key (force the new format — the legacy one predates Ed25519). The passphrase carries over. New to key formats? The Ed25519 vs RSA explainer is the thirty-second version, and a migration is a fine moment to generate a modern key for anything still on an old RSA one.

In Termalin the imported keys go into the built-in agent, so it's one unlock per session of work with passphrase caching on a timer you set, the same role MobaXterm's agent played. It speaks the standard ssh-agent protocol on its own per-user pipe or socket, so a CLI pointed at it with SSH_AUTH_SOCK can sign through it too.

Step 3 — don't blindly re-trust every server

MobaXterm remembers the host keys of servers you've connected to. Don't try to migrate that list. A move is the one natural moment you'll ever get to re-verify what you're actually connecting to. A modern client (Termalin uses trust-on-first-use with a proper known_hosts) shows each server's fingerprint on first connect — glance at the ones that matter, accept, move on. Ten minutes for a fleet you'll then trust cleanly for years.

Step 4 — the habits that carry over (and the one that doesn't)

Most of what you like about MobaXterm has a direct equivalent:

  • Tabs — you already think in tabs; you keep them (browser-style, drag to reorder, an activity glow on the quiet ones).
  • Files beside the shell — MobaXterm's docked SFTP browser becomes an SFTP panel in the same tab as the terminal: browse, edit in place with a built-in editor, upload. No second window, no re-entering credentials.
  • The credential vault — replaced by a local encrypted vault with a master password, auto-lock, and (on Windows) Windows Hello to re-unlock.

The one habit that does not carry over: the bundled X server. Termalin deliberately isn't a toolbox — it's a focused client for SSH, SFTP, FTP, Telnet, Serial and S3, and it does not ship an X server or a bag of Unix binaries. If forwarding X11 GUI apps from a server to your Windows desktop is part of your daily work, that's the honest reason to keep MobaXterm installed alongside — use the right tool for that job and let the new client handle the day-to-day.

What you gain that MobaXterm can't offer

  • The same setup on every OS. Windows, macOS and Linux desktops and native iPhone and iPad apps, with your hosts, keys and command history following you — plus a browser cabinet at termal.in/account for a real terminal from any laptop, phone or tablet with no install. That's the wall MobaXterm can't cross.
  • Encrypted sync instead of a USB stick (Pro). Your vault syncs end-to-end encrypted, so the sync server only ever holds ciphertext — the modern version of carrying MobaXterm.ini around.
  • An agent layer. A built-in MCP server lets an AI agent — Claude Code, Cursor, Codex — work your servers through the app without ever holding a key, under a per-host policy you set and mirrored in a live watch grid.

On price: MobaXterm's Professional license is a one-time $69. Termalin's Free tier is the whole desktop app, local, with no host limits; Pro (the encrypted cloud) is $8/mo billed yearly, with a one-time lifetime deal during the beta and a 14-day trial that needs no card. Different models — pick the one that fits how you like to pay.

Termalin runs on Windows, macOS, Linux and iOS; the Free tier has no host limits and imports a MobaXterm sessions export with its folders — download it, or see the full MobaXterm comparison.

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