Install the desktop client

The desktop client runs on Windows, macOS and Linux and is the easiest way to connect. Once installed, it manages multiple controller accounts — see Accounts & sessions for signing in.

Install

Grab an installer from the download page, or use a package manager below.

Windows

Download and run the .exe installer (Windows 10 / 11, x64). A native RDP client is bundled with the app, so nothing else is needed to open Windows targets.

macOS

Download the .dmg, open it, and drag Tessera to Applications.

Linux (Debian / Ubuntu)

Install from the apt repository so updates arrive through apt upgrade:

curl -fsSL https://packages.tessera.company/apt/tessera.gpg.asc \
  | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/tessera.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/tessera.gpg] https://packages.tessera.company/apt stable main" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/tessera.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install tessera-desktop

Prefer a one-off file? Download the .deb from the download page and run sudo apt install ./tessera-desktop_*.deb. The tessera-desktop package also installs the tessera-cli binary.

A native RDP client is bundled with the app on all three platforms — Windows, macOS and Linux — so nothing extra is needed to open RDP targets. (On Linux the .deb ships its own FreeRDP under /usr/lib/tessera/freerdp and doesn’t depend on the distro package; a dev or non-.deb build falls back to an xfreerdp3 on your PATH.)

Next

• Accounts & sessions — add your controller account and sign in.
• Connecting: SSH, databases & RDP