Ostgate

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Install and sign in

What you need, how to install Ostgate, sign in with your Google account and find the instances you can reach.

Updated

Requirements

  • A Mac with Apple Silicon. Intel Macs are not supported.
  • macOS 26.3 or later.
  • A Google account with access to at least one Google Cloud project.

Ostgate needs no gcloud, no agent on your instances and no public IP addresses. The instances only have to be reachable by Identity-Aware Proxy, which the next section sets up.

Install and sign in

  1. Download the disk image (Ostgate 0.0.1), open it and drag Ostgate to Applications, then open it.
  2. Click Sign in with Google. Your own browser opens Google's consent screen.
  3. Tick every permission on that screen. Ostgate refuses a sign-in with unticked permissions, because it could not list or connect to anything with it.

To add another Google account, use Add Account… in the toolbar's account menu. Accounts work side by side; each keeps its own tokens, SSH key, tunnels and settings. A window shows all accounts or just one, chosen from the same menu, and New Window (⌘N) opens another.

Your refresh token is stored in the macOS Keychain. Nothing is sent anywhere except to Google; see the Privacy Policy.

Find your instances

The sidebar has five areas: Home (⌘1), Resources (⌘2), Connections (⌘3), Local (⌘4) and Settings (⌘5).

  • Pin your projects first. In Resources, click Pin Project…, search by project ID or name, and click Add. Unpinning a project changes nothing on Google Cloud.
  • Resources lists VMs, Cloud SQL instances and Cloud Run services by account and project. ⌘F filters by name, IP, zone, label or OS; ⌘R refreshes; ⌥⌘0 shows the inspector for the selected instance.
  • Home shows what is live now, problems that need you, recent connections and favourites.
  • Quick Open (⌘K) finds any instance by name across every account. ↩ runs its default action, ⌘↩ lists every action for it.

Double-click an instance, or press ↩, to connect the right way for its OS: SSH for Linux, RDP for Windows. A stopped instance offers to start instead. Right-click for everything else, including Start and Stop….