BoxHaven Desktop

Keep your boxes together in one desktop window. The left sidebar shows your boxes and their machine status. Select a box to attach to its persistent tmux session in the right pane.

You can switch between boxes without closing their terminals. Closing the app leaves your remote sessions running. Reopen the app to return to the selected box.

Build and open

The initial app is available as a source build, verified on macOS Apple Silicon. Install Node.js 22.12 or later, Go 1.23 or later, and Xcode Command Line Tools. From a BoxHaven checkout:

npm --prefix desktop ci
npm run desktop

To build a local .app bundle:

npm run desktop:package
open desktop/release/BoxHaven-darwin-arm64/BoxHaven.app

The output path includes the build machine's architecture. Local builds are not signed or notarized for public distribution.

Connect your account

The app bundles the CLI and uses its global login and configuration. If you already use bh, your boxes appear automatically. Project-specific .boxhaven.toml settings are not used by the desktop app.

Use the gear button to sign in through your browser. For a first login, enter https://api.boxhaven.dev or your own backend API URL. You can also configure a self-hosted backend using bh login --backend-url https://api.example.com. The desktop app needs no additional backend services or deployment changes.

Start some work

Click New box in the sidebar, name it, choose a provider, region, and size, and click Create box. On an empty account, you can also click Create box in the empty pane. BoxHaven creates the box and opens its terminal automatically when it is ready.

The size picker shows CPU, memory, disk, and hourly/monthly price estimates from your backend for the CLI's active team. Backend billing quotes take precedence over provider prices. Monthly estimates assume 730 hours when no monthly price is supplied.

New boxes start empty; creating a box does not upload local project files. Clone your repository and start an agent directly in the box's terminal.

You can close the dialog and work in another box while provisioning continues. Click the progress notice in the sidebar to see its status or any error. Closing and reopening the window preserves creation progress; quitting waits for the request to finish. If creation fails, check the refreshed sidebar before trying another name, since the provider may already have allocated the box.

Select an existing box to reattach to its session. The sidebar refreshes every 15 seconds; use the refresh button or ⌘R for an immediate update. Use ⌘K to find a box. Reconnect reattaches after a connection closes. Connection settings includes Close local connections for switching accounts; remote sessions keep running.

Rename a box

Open the box’s sidebar overflow menu, choose Rename box, enter a new name, and click Save. Names use lowercase letters, numbers, and hyphens, up to 63 characters. The current terminal stays connected and the sidebar updates automatically.

Open a preview

Click Open preview in the selected box's header to open its web URL in your default browser. The app uses the URL assigned by your backend. If your backend has no preview domain configured, the button is disabled. Run a web server on the box's preview port to serve your application; see web previews.

Shut down a box

Choose Destroy box… from the overflow menu and confirm the named box in the dialog. This permanently deletes its VM and files and stops every running session. Save any work you want to keep first. Cancel is selected by default.

After deletion, the box disappears from the sidebar and its terminal closes. Other boxes remain running. Closing the window does not cancel a confirmed deletion; quitting waits for it to finish. Closing a local connection keeps the box running. There is currently no stop/resume operation that preserves the VM.

The sidebar's online, offline, and creating labels describe the machine's heartbeat and setup state. They do not indicate agent progress or completion. Project sync is available through the CLI.

Connections use bh connect, including its existing credential forwarding, short-lived SSH certificates, and pinned host keys. See the security model.