rootshell: Local Terminal, SSH

rootshell: Local Terminal, SSH

VPN over SSH and tssh

40 ratings
16 reviews
#209 in free Developer Tools
📊 Productivity
🛠️ Developer Tools
Free

Details

  • Released
  • Updated
  • April 19, 2026
  • September 24, 2026

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rootshell: Local Terminal, SSH screenshot #1 for iPhone
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About

This app provides a powerful, desktop-class terminal emulator with GPU acceleration and native support for SSH, Mosh, and tssh. It offers features like system-wide VPN over SSH, native Git integration, and AI assistance for hands-free command execution and web searches.

✓GPU-accelerated terminal
✓Native SSH and Mosh support
✓System-wide VPN over SSH
✓Native Git client
✓AI voice and text agents
✓Cloud and Kubernetes integration
✓Hardware security key support
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What's New in rootshell

1.0.12

September 24, 2026

SFTP File Manager - Browse local folders and remote SSH or tssh hosts side by side. Copy and move files and folders, rename items, create folders, preview files and open folders in a terminal. - Track queued transfers with progress, speed, cancellation and retry. Resolve conflicts with Replace, Skip or Keep Both. - Open from the keyboard toolbar or Cmd-Shift-U. Use a sidebar or floating overlay on iPad, or a sheet on iPhone, with hardware keyboard navigation. New Terminal Keyboard - Optional English QWERTY keyboard with swipe-accessible Symbols, Navigation and Shortcuts pages. Choose Shell, Vim, Emacs, Nano or Agent presets, use sticky modifiers, and hold Space to move the cursor. - Seven styles: Flat, Sculpted, Steampunk, Phosphor, Beige Box, Neon Grid and Circuit Board. Customize theme colors, height, haptics and optional key sounds. - Float or dock the keyboard on iPad. Keep keyboard state shared across tabs or remember it per tab. Optional spelling suggestions apply only when tapped. - Enable in Settings > Terminal > Terminal Keyboard. Switch to Apple's keyboard for other languages, emoji, swipe typing or dictation. iPhone adds live previews and a hands-on keyboard tutorial. herdr Control Mode - Use native rootshell tabs and split panes for herdr over SSH or tssh. Manage workspaces and Git worktrees, rearrange panes, and see agent activity and pane notifications. - Enable Control Mode in the session picker or choose herdr (control) in a profile. Requires herdr 0.9.0 or newer. Regular herdr works in fallback mode; the optional experimental rootshell fork adds smooth native scrolling, global scrollback search and shared viewing with a compatible host. Sessions & Panes - Discover Sessions rescans without reconnecting. Automatic remote discovery has its own setting, and the iPhone session picker better accommodates the keyboard and larger text. - Open in Folder (Cmd-Shift-J) creates a tab or split in a folder on the focused host, with browsing, completion and recent folders. - Choose Pane to Zoom (Option-Cmd-P) shows numbered panes in tmux and herdr control mode. Tap a pane or type its number to zoom it. - Optional confirmation before closing a split pane. Improved tmux split equalization, divider dragging and scroll-position preservation. - Drag images and PDFs from Files or Photos into SSH-backed terminals to upload, including tmux and herdr control-mode panes. Touch & Appearance - Animated Gesture Help in Settings > Terminal explains gestures for your device. With rootshell's selection loupe enabled, hold and tap the loupe with a second finger to right-click or drag in mouse-aware terminal apps. - Screen Sharing gains Trackpad pointer mode, adjustable pointer speed and a choice of local or remote cursor. - New customizable Aquarium background and enhanced Jellyfish graphics. Choose independent effects for the terminal keyboard and iPad sidebar. Connections & Reliability - Added OpenSSH strict key exchange and improved compatibility with servers including MikroTik RouterOS. Fixed keepalive hangs, greeting-related host-key verification failures, data loss during key renewal and HMAC authentication failures. - Configure tssh connection timeouts per profile. Improved SSH and Screen Sharing survival during brief app switches when Keep SSH Alive in Background is enabled, subject to iOS background limits. - Fixed garbled terminal content during resizing and out-of-order SSH size updates, plus content extending beneath the iPhone keyboard toolbar. - Improved dictation corrections, including Korean input, and hardware keyboard mod-tap behavior. Fixed unresponsive iPadOS 27 menu commands and crashes from malformed YubiKey RSA public keys. - Hidden tabs retain lower GPU memory use after layout changes. Updated AI model choices for OpenAI, Anthropic and Amazon Bedrock connections.

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Charts

Top Free

📉 209-3

Developer Tools

This app dropped -3 positions in Developer Tools chart.

Last updated on October 8, 2026.

User reviews

Professional-Grade Terminal App

Hands down, the best and most polished terminal app for iPhone and iPad. It’s built on the excellent libghostty, is open source, and is actively maintained by a highly responsive developer.

title

This is most great app i have ever seen.

Great app for iPhone and iPad

This application meets every requirement, serving as a unified tool for SSH and high-performance screen sharing on Mac. One enhancement request: include a mouse pointer option alongside touch during screen sharing.

Has potential, but increasingly bloated with slop

EDIT: sorry app author i ain’t allat, happy for u / sorry that happened tho. oh also i forgot to mention: the ‘funny’ ‘jokes’ shown while connecting to a remote host are truly awful claudeslop

I was psyched when I read about this project—a libghostty-based, totally free SSH client as a desperately needed alternative to Termius & Blink? Yes, please. And the rendering is indeed very nice thanks to libghostty. There are some nice features like the Tailscale SSH integration.

Unfortunately the app has very clearly been developed with heavy LLM assistance to pile in feature upon feature, and the cracks are starting to show. Lots of awesome sounding features barely work once you give them a try—for example, screen sharing inexplicably has *seconds* of lag on the same connection Screens is perfectly snappy on. And then there are the useless features, like the location diary… why?

Also the UI, though pretty enough, is absolutely infuriating, not documented, and not discoverable. The entire project IMO is a cautionary tale on the dangers of `claude —yolo`.
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Response from developer

Feel free to reach out on our GitHub page if you are having issues. Our Screen Sharing feature is the only application in the I am aware of on this platform delivering low latency and high resolution and was created due to my frustration with the poor performance of existing apps. Screens only support low resolution and high latency under the best of network conditions limited by legacy RFB only support. It is worth confirming you are not connecting over Tailscale as the app warns as it is unable to handle the high packet rate required. High Performance mode Screen Sharing is intended for use over your local network. Location Diary is similar to Blink and its “geo” command which requires manually activating location services if you are using a TCP based connection and leave the app. Use is optional and is implemented to stay within AppStore guidelines. Fortunately in rootshell we offer multiple options that survive even a full device reboot including both mosh and tssh. Each update has detailed release notes on our website where we have already published over 130 free updates. A large number of our users prefer that we offer options to completely get out of the way turning off app UI chrome and extending full screen. This is always a trade off with discoverability.

Amazing local terminal

Feels at home with Ghostty users. Works amazingly well on iPhone and iPad and allow actual work to be done via terminal.

Works with AI coding agents and herdr.

Developer apps

FAQ

What is rootshell?

rootshell is a desktop-class terminal emulator built on a GPU-accelerated engine. It offers native SSH, Mosh compatibility, system-wide VPN over SSH, native Git, and AI assistance, all within a single application.

Does rootshell have ads?

No, rootshell is ad-free. The application is available for free and does not contain advertisements, allowing for an uninterrupted user experience.

What protocols does rootshell support for remote connections?

rootshell supports native SSH with various key exchange algorithms including post-quantum options. It also offers Mosh-compatible roaming sessions and tssh integration with QUIC and KCP transport for lower latency.

Can rootshell be used as a VPN?

Yes, rootshell can turn any SSH or tssh session into a system-wide VPN. This allows you to route all your device traffic through your remote server using standard SSH, QUIC, or KCP transport without requiring extra server software.

How does rootshell integrate with tmux?

rootshell provides native tmux integration by allowing you to attach in control mode. This transforms tmux windows into native tabs and panes into real splits, enabling seamless copy, paste, search, and scrolling with native gestures.

What AI features are available in rootshell?

rootshell includes a voice AI agent that can read scrollback, run commands over SSH hands-free, and search the web. There's also optional text AI integration with models like Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini for command execution and output analysis.

Is rootshell suitable for managing cloud resources?

Yes, rootshell supports connections to major cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and DigitalOcean. You can browse instances, access serial consoles, and generate EKS kubeconfigs, as well as debug Kubernetes nodes.

What is the rating and update frequency of rootshell?

rootshell has a high rating of 4.8 stars from 23 ratings. It was last updated on June 29, 2026, indicating active development and maintenance.