🛠️ Developer ToolsMicrosoftmacOS Sonoma 14development

VS Code Remote SSH drops connection every few minutes on macOS Sonoma

Fresh6 months ago

Mar 14, 20260 views

Confidence Score73%

73%

Problem

VS Code Remote SSH connections drop every 3–10 minutes with 'Connection to server closed' on macOS Sonoma. The issue started after upgrading macOS. macOS Sonoma introduced more aggressive network connection management that closes idle TCP connections. SSH connections without keepalive packets are silently terminated by the OS networking stack.

Error Output

Connection to server closed
[Error] Could not establish connection to "myserver": The VS Code Server failed to start.

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Your OS

OS version

Product version

1 Fix

Canonical Fix

Moderate Confidence Fix

69% confidence77% success rate8 verificationsLast verified Mar 14, 2026

Add SSH keepalive settings to ~/.ssh/config

Low Risk

macOS Sonoma closes idle TCP connections aggressively. SSH connections without keepalive packets are silently terminated by the OS before VS Code detects the disconnect.

Trust Score

8 verifications

77% success

Add keepalive to ~/.ssh/config

Edit or create ~/.ssh/config:

text

Host *
  ServerAliveInterval 60
  ServerAliveCountMax 3
  TCPKeepAlive yes

2
Enable TCP keepalive at the OS level
In Terminal:
bash
```
sudo pmset -a tcpkeepalive 1
```
3
Close and reopen the VS Code Remote SSH connection
Press Cmd+Shift+P → Remote-SSH: Kill VS Code Server on Host, then reconnect.

Validation

Remote SSH session stays connected for 30+ minutes of idle time without dropping.

Verification Summary

Worked: 8

Partial: 2

Failed: 3

Last verified Mar 14, 2026

Environment

Product: VS Code Remote SSH
OS: macOS Sonoma 14
Environment: development

Submitted by

Alex Chen

2450 rep