How to reduce verbosity and silence SSH connection output

When connecting to a remote server using SSH, the terminal often displays output that includes informational messages and diagnostics. This can make it difficult to focus on your tasks. Reducing or silencing this output helps to keep your terminal uncluttered.

You can control the amount of output from an SSH session by using specific options in the SSH command. These options let you reduce the verbosity or silence the output entirely. This is useful in scripts or when you need a clean terminal without distractions.

This guide provides simple steps to minimize or silence the output from SSH connections. This will help you keep your terminal clean and focused on the important tasks.

1. Open the terminal on your local machine.
2. Add the -q option to the SSH command to silence warnings and messages.

   ssh -q user@remotehost

3. Use the -o LogLevel=ERROR option to display only error messages.

   ssh -o LogLevel=ERROR user@remotehost

4. Combine -q with -o LogLevel=QUIET to silence all output.

   ssh -q -o LogLevel=QUIET user@remotehost

5. Add these options to your SSH config file (~/.ssh/config) to apply them by default for specific hosts.

       Host remotehost
       HostName remotehost
       User your-username
       LogLevel QUIET
       QuietMode yes
       

6. Test the connection to ensure the output is minimized or silenced as needed.
7. Apply these options in your scripts or command line tasks to reduce output.

   ssh -q -o LogLevel=QUIET user@remotehost "your-command"

8. Remove or adjust these options if you need more detailed output later.

   ssh -o LogLevel=INFO user@remotehost