What connection messages mean

Waycar tells you how each Host’s connection is doing in three places: rows above your agents in the Console, a message over an agent you have open, and the Session Ended screen when a terminal stops. This page explains each message and what to do about it.

Paused, Disabled, or Unavailable?

These three look alike but mean different things:

• Paused means Waycar isn’t the active app, so it has set the connection aside. Nothing is wrong. Come back to Waycar and it connects again on its own.
• Disabled means you switched the Host off in Hosts. Waycar never connects to a disabled Host. Turn its Enabled switch back on to see its agents.
• Unavailable means the connection failed in a way that retrying can’t fix, so Waycar stopped retrying. Tap the row to open the Host’s page, read the message under Reconnect, fix the problem, then tap Reconnect. See Can’t connect to a Host.

What are the rows above my agents?

The Console shows one row for each Host that isn’t simply connected. Rows marked with a › open that Host’s page when you tap them. If you picked one Host in the Host menu, only its rows show.

Row	What it means	What to do
“Connecting to …”	Waycar is opening the connection.	Wait.
“Reconnecting to : ”	The connection dropped and Waycar is retrying on its own.	Wait, or tap the row to see the Host’s page.
“Connection to is paused.”	Waycar isn’t active, so the connection is set aside.	Nothing. It resumes when you return.
“Loading Agents from …”	Connected, and fetching the agent list.	Wait.
“: ”	The connection failed and retries stopped. A shield icon means the host key changed.	Tap the row, fix the problem, tap Reconnect. For a changed key, see Host keys and fingerprints.
“Waiting for you to trust ’s host key”	The Host answered, and Waycar needs you to confirm its key.	Tap the row and confirm the fingerprint.
“Waiting for you to trust the Jump Host’s host key for ”	Same, for the Jump Host.	Tap the row and confirm the Jump Host’s fingerprint.
“: Could not sync this Host’s Agents. Retrying…”	Waycar is connected but couldn’t load this Host’s agent list. It retries on its own.	Wait. If the row stays, tap it to open the Host’s page.

On a Host that runs both herdr and tmux, a row for one Backend (for example “herdr on : …”) has its own Retry button.

What do the messages over an open agent mean?

When you have an agent open and its Host isn’t connected, the agent screen shows one of these:

Title	What it means	What to do
Connecting…	“Opening the connection.”	Wait.
Reconnecting…	The connection dropped; the reason shows below.	Wait. Waycar retries on its own.
Loading Agents…	“Fetching the latest Agents.”	Wait.
Connection Paused	“The connection is paused until Waycar becomes active.”	Nothing. It resumes when Waycar is active.
Is Disabled	“Turn it on in Hosts to see its Agents.”	Turn the Host on in Hosts.
Host Unavailable	Retries stopped; the reason shows below.	Open the Host’s page, fix the problem, tap Reconnect.
Please select an agent	“This Agent’s pane is no longer reported. Choose another Agent from the list.”	The agent was closed. Pick another one.

While a terminal is opening, it also shows a counter such as “Connecting to · 5s” or “Reconnecting to · 5s”, so you can see it’s still working.

What does Session Ended mean?

When a terminal stops and can’t come back by itself, the Session Ended screen shows why. Reattach opens the terminal again. Use SSH Instead appears only after a mosh failure.

Message	What it means	What to do
“The session ended.”	The terminal closed on the Host.	Tap Reattach.
“The Host is not connected.”	The Host’s connection is down.	Wait for it to reconnect, then tap Reattach.
“Another terminal is already open on this Host.”	A second view tried to read a terminal that’s already open in Waycar. The live one keeps running.	Close the other view, then tap Reattach.
“The Host did not answer in time.”	The Host was too slow to respond.	Check your network, then tap Reattach.
“The mosh session failed: …”	mosh couldn’t carry the terminal.	Tap Use SSH Instead, or see mosh isn’t connecting.
“The Host stopped answering over UDP for 65s.”	A mosh terminal lost its Host. Waycar already reattached once on its own.	Check your network, then tap Reattach or Use SSH Instead.
“herdr is not on this Host’s SSH PATH. …”	The SSH login can’t find the herdr command.	See Can’t connect to a Host.

For how Waycar handles network changes on its own, see Network changes and reconnecting.