Connect to a Raspberry Pi from your Mac

A Raspberry Pi is the gateway drug to home labs, IoT projects, and self-hosted services. Whether yours runs Pi-hole, Home Assistant, a Plex server, or a custom Python project, the workflow is the same: SSH in for command-line work, copy files back and forth, occasionally fire up a desktop view, and tunnel a service to reach it from your laptop. SSHive bundles all four into one window, so managing a Pi from your Mac stops feeling like assembling a workflow from five different apps. The free tier of SSHive — SSH terminal + SFTP file manager — already covers 80% of what you do with a Pi: run `apt update`, edit configs, copy a script over, tail a log. Pro adds VNC (for the headless Pi GUI), tunnels (to reach Home Assistant's 8123 from your Mac browser without exposing it), broadcast (handy if you have multiple Pis), and the MCP integration so Claude can debug your Pi setup.

On Raspberry Pi OS, SSH is disabled by default. Either flash an SD card with Raspberry Pi Imager and use the gear icon to pre-set SSH + Wi-Fi + hostname, or after first boot run `sudo raspi-config` → Interface Options → SSH → Enable. The default username is `pi` (older releases) or whatever you set in the imager. Once SSH is up, find the Pi's IP with `arp -a | grep "raspberrypi"` from your Mac, or check your router. In SSHive, click "New connection", enter `raspberrypi.local` (or the IP), user `pi`, password method first time. SSHive offers to import the connection into a profile — say yes, give it a name like "Pi 4 - Living Room", and from now on it's a one-click connection.

Password auth is fine for first contact, but you should switch to keys. From SSHive's terminal: `ssh-copy-id pi@raspberrypi.local` if you have a key already; otherwise generate one with `ssh-keygen -t ed25519`. Edit the SSHive profile, switch auth from "Password" to "Private Key", point to `~/.ssh/id_ed25519`. Disable password auth on the Pi (`sudo sed -i "s/#PasswordAuthentication yes/PasswordAuthentication no/" /etc/ssh/sshd_config && sudo systemctl restart ssh`) and you're hardened against brute-force.

Many Pi services expose a web UI on a non-standard port: Home Assistant on 8123, Pi-hole admin on 80, Portainer on 9000. Instead of opening these on your home network (let alone Internet), use SSHive's tunnel feature. Edit your Pi profile, add a Local forward — Local port 8123, Remote host `localhost`, Remote port 8123. Reconnect. Open `http://localhost:8123` on your Mac — you reach Home Assistant through the SSH tunnel, encrypted, with no port forwarding on your router.