A native macOS GUI for running a Mobius Hotline server. Instead of fiddling with the command line, you get a point-and-click app that manages the server process, configuration, and logs.

Hotline was always designed to help the technically curious jump into the world of server creation with a simple point-and-click interface. The goal is to be able to provide this experience for Mobius, the most popular version of the Hotline server operating today.

There will not be a Windows or Linux version of this as it is Swift UI build, aka Mac Native.

The app embeds the Mobius Hotline server binary (written in Go) and wraps it in a SwiftUI interface. Being a mix of Go and Swift UI, this app should use minimal amounts of RAM to operate. It's 55~ MB size is largely due to needing dual UB binaries for the Mobius Go CLI and the Swift UI.

Download the latest release

Hotline was a client-server platform from the late '90s for file sharing, chat, and message boards. It has a small but active community keeping it alive. Mobius is a modern, cross-platform Hotline server that's compatible with all the popular Hotline clients.

• Setup wizard — guided first-launch experience walks you through server name, description, file root, banner, network, trackers, and more
• Start, stop, and restart the server with one click or keyboard shortcuts (Server menu)
• Edit server name, description, port, and tracker registration from the GUI
• Browse and set your file root directory
• Edit the login agreement and message board
• Set a server banner image (includes a bundled default banner)
• Account management — create, edit, and delete user accounts with a visual permissions editor covering all 35 Hotline access flags
• Ban management — ban and unban by IP, username, or nickname via the server's REST API
• Online users monitor — see who's connected in real time with auto-refreshing stats (connected users, peak, downloads, uploads)
• File browser — browse the server's file root directory with file sizes and dates
• News editor — manage the message board and threaded news categories
• Live log viewer — combined command center view with online users and server logs in a split pane
• Config reload — push config changes to the running server without restarting
• Update checker — checks GitHub for new releases from the About window
• Server process is automatically stopped when the app quits
• Universal binary (Apple Silicon and Intel)
• Fully signed and notarized for macOS Gatekeeper

• Display the embedded Mobius server version
• Implement any remaining Mobius features not yet exposed in the GUI

Grab the latest .dmg from the Releases page, open it, and drag MobiusAdmin to your Applications folder.

Requirements:

• Xcode 15+
• XcodeGen (brew install xcodegen)
• Go (to build the server binary)

# Build the server binary
make server

# Build the app (debug)
make gui

# Build a signed release
make gui-release

# Build, notarize, and staple
make gui-notarize

For release and notarization builds, create a .env file in the repo root:

APPLE_ID=your@email.com
APPLE_PASSWORD=your-app-specific-password
APPLE_TEAM_ID=YOUR_TEAM_ID
APPLE_SIGNING_IDENTITY=Developer ID Application: Your Name (YOUR_TEAM_ID)

Currently using Go 1.26 which supports macOS 12 (Monterey) as the minimum, and some newer SwiftUI APIs (like the @Observable macro which requires macOS 14). If someone is so inclined, macOS 12 support wouldn't require much work. If someone is willing to try their hand at Go 1.22 with a fork, this could be ported to as early as 10.15 Catalina.

On first launch the app creates a config directory at:

~/Library/Application Support/MobiusAdmin/config/

This contains the standard Mobius config layout:

config/
├── Agreement.txt       # Login agreement shown to connecting users
├── Files/              # Shared files directory
├── MessageBoard.txt    # Server message board
├── ThreadedNews.yaml   # Threaded news data
├── Users/              # User account files
│   ├── admin.yaml      # Default admin (password: admin)
│   └── guest.yaml      # Default guest (no password)
├── banner.jpg          # Server banner image
└── config.yaml         # Server settings

You can change the config directory and file root from the Settings panel in the app.

• guest — no password, can download files and chat
• admin — password admin, full access

Change the admin password from a Hotline client after your first login.

The server listens on port 5500 by default (file transfers on 5501). To allow connections from outside your LAN, you'll need to forward these ports on your router.

Check out Hotline Navigator, a modern Hotline client available for macOS, Windows, Linux, Android, iOS, and iPadOS.

See LICENSE.txt.