# Blink Shell 14: Legacy — user reviews > 50 indexed App Store user reviews of Blink Shell 14 by Carlos Cabanero SL, rated 4.50/5 from 305 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/blink-shell-14-legacy/id1156707581/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/blink-shell-14-legacy/id1156707581.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 245 · 4★ 20 · 3★ 11 · 2★ 6 · 1★ 23 ## What do users think of Blink Shell 14? Overall sentiment: positive **Pros** - 🚀 Persistent SSH sessions - 👍 Excellent Mosh support - 💡 Innovative keyboard features - ✨ Great UI and customization - ✅ No subscription model - 🌟 Responsive developer support - 💯 Works well with hardware keyboards - 💻 Turns iPad into dev machine - ⚡ Fast and responsive - 🎨 Multiple color themes - 🛠️ Useful built-in utilities - 🔄 Seamless session restoration **Cons** - 🐛 Frequent crashes/instability - 🐛 Inconsistent scrolling behavior - 🐛 File transfer issues (SCP/SFTP) - 🐛 Some key mapping issues - 🐛 UI glitches in split screen - 🐛 Alt key workaround needed - 🐛 Missing local tools (e.g., vim) - 🐛 Documentation is lacking **Commonly reported bugs** - M1 Mac app crashes on right-click - Up arrow removes spaces in commands - Alt key requires mapping to escape - File transfer (SCP/SFTP) not working - App crashes when right-clicking on M1 Mac - Scrolling behavior changes frequently - Slash key requires three keystrokes on internal keyboard - Socket error with non-standard ports (resolved with specific usage) - Accidentally opening second tab, unable to type - Current version drops and hangs Mosh connections - SCP does not ask for key passphrase - ssh-keygen -p crashes the app - SSH key files not in standard .ssh directory - SFTP is a copy of broken SCP - Paste sometimes works and sometimes doesn't - SSH for hosts with keys via config not working - Split screen mode causes issues with tmux sessions **Most requested features** - Sync light/dark themes with iOS - Add iperf3 to built-in utilities - Rectangular text selection - More intuitive alt key mapping - Fix M1 Mac right-click crash - Add more local tools (e.g., vim) - Improve slash key accessibility on internal keyboard - Fix file transfer issues - Improve scrolling behavior for Mosh - Add port forwarding support - Add agent forwarding support ## Newest reviews (11 of 50) ### 5/5 — I might have low requirements *2020-08-21, version 13.5.6* I used panic prompt 2 for a while, and it was fine, but the cursor was often difficult to find and the font selection was limited. Blink has more configuration options, so I can get a nice clear font and a blinking cursor. Hooray! Other than that -- it is a ssh client, what do you want? ### 4/5 — Does not support IOS internal keyboard. *2020-03-26, version 13.3* Using the on screen keyboard tying a / requires three keystrokes. Guys do you really use ~ or the back tick (lower case same key) more than the slash. I rather doubt it. B o o. On youse. 3rd party keyboards are NOT the answer. An option to add a key or replace the ~ or its buddy makes much more sense. Rather than get carried away with toys, colors etc why not make this thing useful for those of us who who it as professional admins/programmers. And there does not seem to be a way to ask questions. That said I’m not sure they care about the internal keyboard. If you’re a ssh/Unix shell user this is for you. I do not use windows or Mac workstations. With blink I can just carry my iPad. Totally works whatever you know how to do, you can do only any server you can ssh into. It’s easily a five start if the slash did not take three (that’s 3 fellows) keystrokes. ### 5/5 — Wonderfully useful. *2020-03-07, version 13.3* Update: Pretty happy with this utility. Developer was responsive with an issue I had with nonstandard ports. ————- While it works fine if you have ssh set up on port 22 it does t work at all with a nonstandard port. I get a “ Socket error: Unknown error: -1” I wish I’d known that before I brought it. Update: thanks for the response. I did use the -p option and that is what led to the error. Ok, I tried using -p before specifying the address and it worked fine. This is different from the way ssh usually works on a standard shell where -p can be after the address. Please fix this so others don’t write this nice package off. ### 5/5 — Not without its quirks, but the best terminal for iOS there has ever been *2020-02-23, version 13.3* I suppose the title says it all. Once in a while I accidentally open a second tab and have no idea how I did it, nor can I type anywhere. It takes me a few minutes to remember how to close the tab, and recover my ability to type commands. ### 5/5 — Mosh and Tmux really are a big improvement *2020-01-31, version 13.2.1* I’m not a heavy user but using Mosh with Blink has been awesome. The predictive interface really reduces lag and makes using servers with my cruddy home network much more enjoyable. Definitely snappier than ssh. Thanks for all the work and I appreciate that it’s open source so I could build myself if I’d like. ### 5/5 — First impressions? Whoaaa baby! This is fantastic! *2020-01-21, version 13.1* Only been using it for 30 minutes, but so far I really love it. Never thought I’d have an app I loved this much on my iPad. That said, it has only been 30 minutes. I’ll update this review after I’ve used the app for a longer while. ### 5/5 — It just keeps getting better *2020-01-01, version 13.1* Blink is now my absolute go to for Mosh and SSH. The continued quality improvements just keep making it better. This latest round improves all kinds of keyboard capabilities making it on par with desktop keyboards and even works around Apple’s removal of the near-mandatory ESC key. What I really like is that the author hasn’t gone overboard with unnecessary features nor unnecessary minimalism. The app strikes the right balance and has the feel that they use their own application for real work. The performance and reliability is great — exactly what’s needed from a terminal application. It’s also with that Blink has a number of diagnostic tools in it as well for helping to solve network issues. (e.g. when a host isn’t responding, or when T-Mobile LTE won’t allow ssh and you should activate a VPN). ### 5/5 — Fully featured SSH client for a good price *2019-09-24, version 12.10* I switched to Blink from a popular competitor’s app because the competitor’s app kept losing my session after being idle in the background, even with mosh enabled. That particular app offers to solve that problem if you’re willing to pay them a hundred bucks a year under the subscription model. No thanks! Blink is highly customizable and flexible. I wish I had installed it sooner! Sessions stay up without issue and come back even when I switch networks, thanks to proper mosh support. ### 5/5 — bluetooth + emacs actually works; nuff said *2019-07-20, version 12.10* Every other terminal emulator I've tried has at least one usability deal-breaker. Here, even ESC-x and Ctrl-_ behave completely normally. With a mosh connection, I can literally flip open the iPad and resume a remote coding session in seconds. At this point, it's almost possible to dump the laptop entirely. ### 5/5 — Overall satisfied *2019-07-03, version 12.9* I was a bit hesitant to buy this at first with the $20 price tag, but I’ll say now I don’t regret it one bit. I’m a Software Engineer by day, however I use a work computer and didn’t have any dire need for a setup like this. I merely wanted to experiment with programming on an iPad for some side projects. After a couple days with Blink I am blown away by how fun Coding is on the iPad. The multitasking nature of the device coupled with Blink/Mosh makes for a great environment to get work done in. Anyone that’s on the fence about this I would say go for it! For the record, I only briefly tried one free alternative out there but I really preferred the interface and customizability of Blink which was ultimately why I made the purchase. No menus and just a terminal is all I need! ### 4/5 — Hands down one of the best terminal emulators for the iPad *2019-06-01, version 12.8* First, of all, mosh. If you don’t have mosh get mosh. Fully, whole heartedly, changed my whole development experience. This terminal has great support for it. Some commands compiled have issues with their standard flags but whatever I guess. I can work around it a little bit. But overall, this app is the most iOS compliant terminal emulator I have seen around. Good freaking job devs. Honestly. However, please respond for the non-standard command flags. I use a lot of port forwarding and some of these commands are missing their port arguments. And I know it’s open source, but I don’t have a Mac to sign and load with and I payed 20 dollars. Please help. ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — App is crap. None of the file transfer options work. *2020-03-19, version 13.3* I and many others paid a lot of money (as far as apps are concerned) for this program and none of the file transfer options work. So SCP, SFTP, none of them work for transferring files from the shell to the various remote computers. It’s basically completely worthless now. It worked when I bought it but after an update about three months in, none of it works anymore. It’s some issue in libcurl but even still, this is something that needs to be made a priority for those of use that didn’t install from github. Pretty upset about this frankly. Don’t waste any of your money. There are many other shells out there where file transfer actually works. ### 1/5 — Key Transmission is not as Expected *2019-11-06, version 13.0* EDIT2: 7-Nov-2019 Caps as CTRL is not working again. Not sure what is going on, tried the following: 1. Check caps-as-ctrl + uncheck caps modifier 2. Check caps-as-ctrl + set caps as CTRL in modifier 3. disable caps + try (1, 2) from above. EDIT: emacs undo now works! Thanks devs! Screen rotation issue also seems mostly fixed! Great ssh + mosh app. Recommended. While it's great that the developer offers key-remapping some keys like Ctrl+/ (undo in emacs) do not work as intended. This prevents it from being the 'pro emacs' 20$ app toted by the devs. There are a few other key transmission issues as well (see GH-issues page). This, plus there are a ton of resizing issues where 1/4 - 1/2 of the screen is non-usable until a new session is started. Resizing should be a trivial problem to solve. Please resolve this! Overpriced for a terminal program that cant resize properly and can't transmit vanilla key-bindings. ### 1/5 — Nice shell but not useful to copy files in my experience *2019-10-19, version 12.10* I was initially really impressed and will probably still use Blink to access remote servers. However, what I specifically purchased it to do was to upload files to servers while on the road and at that it has failed miserably. I’ve spent hours trying every variation of scp and raw curl commands since that is the underlying command it is using. I’ve removed passphrases from my keys I’ve done everything but enable passwords on my server and set the password to 1234. Using the same key that works perfectly to ssh, I continually get “Authentication Failure”. I almost gave it two stars for being a decent ssh client, but even that crashes regularly. **Developer response:** Hi! We are very sorry yo found this issue with scp. We are working on a better version but meanwhile, please send us a private message so we are able to help you find what’s going on there. Thanks! ### 1/5 — scp and sftp are unusable *2019-05-28, version 12.8* scp doesn’t bother asking for the key passphrase. For all I know, it can’t even find the SSH key, as it’s not in the .ssh directory. Does not provide a real shell, so eval `ssh-agent` is impossible. Changing the key passphrase in the config command is impossible as the option is unmplemented. ssh-keygen -p crashes the app outright. For whatever reason, SSH key files aren’t in the standard .ssh directory. sftp is literally just a copy of the same broken scp program, not an actual SFTP client. This sort of fakery is completely unjustified. It makes the app look much better on an initial viewing without deserving that. ### 3/5 — You broke my favorite feature *2019-11-11, version 13.0* I have been using Termius for awhile, since they implemented my favorite feature from Blink. On the iPad smart keyboard, using the stupid caps lock key as control modified. I just tried Blink a few minutes ago, and here is what I see: The 'Tab' key prints some sort of special unicode character (copyright or at sign). The CapsLock key properly maps to 'Ctrl', but then any key-presses are not echoed. Although these keypresses aren't echoed, they are taken as keystrokes. If you press CapsLock again, it is back to normal. This effectively makes the CapsLock keyswap with Ctrl unusable. I do not even think the Tab key works out of the box. Just to verify this wasn't an iPadOS bug, I upgraded from iPadOS 13.1.3 to 13.2.2. Some improvements with the 'tab' key, but caps lock mapping still not quite right. I have diagnosed the issue. The mapping between Caps Lock and Control is functioning properly. However, the CapsLock key, whether mapped or not, is acting as a toggle key. So, if you press 'CapsLock-A' it properly goes to the beginning of the line (emacs mode). However, if you now press 'F' 'F' 'F' it goes forward one character at a time. The same is true for 'U' (clear line) and 'C' (INTR). If you then press the CapsLock key again, the 'Lock' is toggled off. ### 3/5 — Current version drops and hangs mosh connectons *2018-11-20, version 12.1* The previous version of Blink was great -- I can open a mosh connection, switch to other apps, and switch back to resume working on a remote machine. After upgrading to the current version, the connection hangs when I switch back to blink after using a few other apps (e.g., Chrome, then Slack). This forces me to create a new window + mosh connection in order to resume my tmux session. However, this leaves increasing numbers of detached mosh connections on the server, and I have to periodically run "killall mosh-server" to clean things up. Would not recommend upgrading since the features did not appear to increase. **Developer response:** We apologize for this inconvenience. This issue should be solved in 12.2 and Mosh sessions are again back to normal. Please let us know on GitHub if you find any problems. Hope you also find new features in v12 useful, like tunnels, ssh agent and proxycommand. Thanks for your support! ### 4/5 — Opinionated in ways that appeal to me; smidge unstable *2021-11-01, version 14.0.2* I prefer Blink(.)app over its current competitors. My biggest complaint is that segfaults and outright app crashes occur too frequently. If the selling point is persistent remote logins, then the client app must be rock solid and this one isn't. More stability and I doubt I'd shop for other clients; as it stands now it remains my go to, but my feelers are up for a replacement. ### 4/5 — A bug I’ve noticed *2021-10-02, version 13.5.14* Using the up arrow for history removes the spaces in the command. Also I know the workaround for the alt key but it would be nice to have something more intuitive than mapping it to escape. Otherwise a very valuable app that works well. ### 4/5 — Great app but where’s the docs? *2020-05-24, version 13.5* Love the app but, hate the fact that there’s absolutely no documentation. Figuring some things out feels like Easter egg hunting. Once you figure it all out and you get mosh running, it’s great. Downside to mosh is that you can’t scroll to see anything that’s “left the screen” and the scrolling is kind of wonky; Control-L becomes your best friend with mosh. ### 4/5 — Excellent terminal but frequent behavior changes *2020-04-23, version 13.4* Blink is awesome and pretty much part of my daily routine. That said, the behavior changes pretty frequently and it’s not always better. The latest release (13.4) for example changes the way scrolling works. Is it cool that people can use a trackpad? Yes. Do I have one? No. So when the changes to support that feature change how terminal scrollback functions (something I use *all the time*), it’s troubling. Where I used to be able to go back in the buffer by pulling down the screen, now I just get the equivalent of an up-arrow at the command prompt or a mouse scroll in vim. I even commented on this in the TestFlight builds. The release comment suggests we move to tmux/screen to get scrolling. While that’s a great suggestion, it really shouldn’t be necessary to maintain the behavior from before the change. And really, even when I do use tmux, I don’t have mouse mode enabled so I get to change my flow (again) to manage scrollback and copy/paste. So, at the end of the day, Blink is very cool. It’s pretty much the best terminal app available for the iPad. Having mosh is also very cool. On the other hand, if I’m using Blink and mosh, I should not be forced to use tmux. I guess it’s back to plain old ssh for now; scrolling seems to work there. Well, at least until that changes. **Developer response:** Hi! Thanks for your message and sorry for any issues these changes may be causing you. We will do better on our release notes in the future and offer alternatives for these cases. ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Impressive and Fully Featured *2022-01-19, version 14.0.3* Im been in IT for 35 years and used all sorts off SSH clients. Many clients, you can get for free but in today’s world, IT staff require cross-platform usability and the ability to sync settings among all devices. Mosh is also great. Theres one SSH client thats able to do all this but its subscription is thru the roof. Blink is getting close to achieving this, syncing across iPhone, iPad, and M1 Macs. Thats all that i actually require. The only issue i have is with the M1 (Apple Silicon) Mac, if you right click on the app, it crashes it, every single time. I know it wasnt originally built for that device, so its still a five star app. But it’s on my wishlist of future updates and would complete all my SSH requirements. ### 5/5 — Finally! *2021-11-19, version 14.0.3* I’ve been looking for an App purely for remote development over ssh. This requires good support with Magic Keyboard. After trying almost all of them, this one is IT! For whatever reason all the other Apps were missing 1 of these most basic features: * Copy & Paste ( without screen jumps and touching ) * Key repeat when pressed Thanks team. I’ll be on the beach! ### 5/5 — Great SSH Client *2021-09-28, version 13.5.14* Works wonderfully. I used to use iSH, but it was lacking satisfactory cursor support (copying text was a huge pain)—this is not an issue with Blink, the level of polish overall is great. I will say I wish there were more local tools available (vim is a big one that’s missing), but no doubt it’s a lovely terminal emulator. ### 5/5 — Straight to the point SSH/Mosh *2021-08-14, version 13.5.12* I was hesitant to buy this app, then I found out that it was open source. I went to the GitHub repo, building instructions were very clear and straightforward and it took less than 10 minutes to build and install on my iPad Pro. After using the app for two weeks, I could help but buy it from the App Store, the app is really amazing. I like how it just starts with the shell and only uses the UI for configuration, any CLI user will appreciate this. Airplay support is very good. Mosh support is very well done. Built in UNIX utilities are great Adding the following features would be great: - Light/dark themes that sync with iOS - iperf3 added to the built in UNIX utilities - Rectangular text select fo easier selection when tmux panes are used. ### 5/5 — Great *2021-06-15, version 13.5.12* For the most part, this app is exactly what a terminal app should be. I was hesitant to drop the cash on something I couldn’t try, but I’m glad I did. Much more responsive than that other SSH app, and more ability to change the appearance to make using a terminal on a pad more pleasant. ### 5/5 — Absolutely love it! *2021-05-10, version 13.5.12* App is getting better and better, one of many best parts is that there is no subscription!!! I hope it stays that way, in-app-purchase is fine ;) ### 5/5 — Best out there *2021-05-01, version 13.5.12* Out of all the ssh terminal programs i’ve tried on the ipad pro, this is the best. Its the only one that allows me to send all the key combos I have for the tmux sessions in my remote machine. It allows me to scroll using the touchscreen. Useful features keeps getting added. ### 5/5 — really excellent and innovative *2021-04-30, version 13.5.12* Continued investment in developing this app has made it my tool of choice. Particularly I’m a fan of the latest keyboard — having a command key modifier on the touch keyboard is a simple, unique but incredibly effective feature. An excellent professional tool. I’ll add that my 2nd favorite feature is the ability to send arbitrary hex codes with keyboard hot keys. The flexibility here is amazing. ### 5/5 — Best of its class *2021-04-11, version 13.5.12* Blink has been my main work tool for some 3 years now (I'm a prof web developer). The UI is amazing, they truly nailed it, Mosh is of course what makes it so workable (sorry plain SSH, you're out, reconnect is a must) and they do consistently reply to my bug reports on GH issues. Way to go guys! ### 5/5 — Persistent connections- worth every cent *2020-10-12, version 13.5.7* Worth the price just for the fact it persists ssh sessions while you switch between apps, such as to research something in Safari. With other ssh client apps your session gets closed after a few seconds and you have to start all over. Not with Blink! --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-06-10.*