# SSH Client - Secure ShellFish — user reviews > 590 indexed App Store user reviews of SSH Client by Anders Borum, rated 4.80/5 from 1,468 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/ssh-client-secure-shellfish/id1336634154/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/ssh-client-secure-shellfish/id1336634154.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 1,344 · 4★ 62 · 3★ 19 · 2★ 7 · 1★ 36 ## What do users think of SSH Client? Overall sentiment: positive **Pros** - 🚀 Turns iPad into productivity machine - 🚀 Seamless SSH experience - 👍 Excellent integration with Files app - 👍 Robust key management and syncing - 👍 Powerful terminal with great features - 👍 Reliable and stable performance - 👍 Responsive and helpful developer **Cons** - 🐛 Occasional crashes or freezes - 🐛 Inconsistent behavior with some commands - 🔒 Concerns about data privacy and security **Commonly reported bugs** - Crashes when running certain commands - Issues with file transfer progress reporting **Most requested features** - Improved documentation and tutorials - Support for additional authentication methods - Customizable keyboard shortcuts and layouts - Tabbed terminal interface ## Newest reviews (20 of 590) ### 4/5 — Very workable but not quite to Termius level industrial quality *2026-08-14, version 2024.8* I was surprised this works well enough to handle Google Antigravity (formerly Gemini) coding with its rapid screen output and resizing and colors rendering. But it has some glitches and lags for sure and cant handle scrolling up at your scrollback history the way other terminals can manage to (sometimes with toggle buttons). This seems to lack a few other features other terminals have but at least it does work and has a solid foundation from which to improve upon. I will probably come back and check how stable/improved this one is in 6-12 months. BUT ONLY IF THE DEVELOPER ALLOWS IOS 17.3.1 again because thats what i have on both devices as I’m a “JB” developer and that’s the highest iOS currently working on the new Dopamine 3.0 JB that came out last week, making major news in the iOS world. ### 5/5 — Bester SSH Client *2026-08-10* Ich nutze den Client für zahlreiche Raspberrys. Er bietet mir alle Funktionen, die mir wichtig sind. Einfache Konfiguration, einfache Anwendung und einen tollen Datenaustausch. Tolle Software, besten Dank! ### 5/5 — Really good *2026-08-07, version 2026.26* Great features and very well maintained. ### 5/5 — Needed SSH App *2026-08-06, version 2026.26* So far, after 5 minutes its great. Need more time try the features. ### 3/5 — Meh *2026-08-03, version 2026.26* It is probably a good ssh client but I’m giving it three stars because the onboarding experience was not great. If you want to save something through the files app you must have a Pro Subscription. To be clear this is fine. But it should not just fail with a cryptic error symbol and not tell you why. An upsell prompt would be a much better user experience than failing with no explanation! Ask for that money guys. It won’t hurt you. After figuring that out I bought a sub but it wouldn’t recognize that I had done so and just kept prompting me to buy again. Doing a “restore purchases” fixed it and now everthing is working great. But getting to that point was more painful than it should have been. ### 5/5 — Very powerful *2026-08-01, version 2026.26* Setup took a little getting used to, but not bad. Works extremely well, and I have a feeling I’ve just scratched the surface of its functionality. Writing an ssh client for such a small screen and such a sandboxed platform like iOS is difficult, and I seriously doubt anyone has done it better. ### 5/5 — Great *2026-07-31, version 2026.26* Great ### 5/5 — Great application *2026-07-30* cool stuff~ ### 5/5 — Very useful and productive *2026-07-27* Even the free version is pretty great on its own. Love the app, have been using it for a while along with owlfiles on i15 and now I don’t feel like opening laptop anymore. The AI agents are accessible via terminal and there is an option to persist sessions with tmux ### 4/5 — Responsive dev *2026-07-25, version 2026.26* very useful tool ### 5/5 — Exceptionnel *2026-07-25, version 2026.26* Tellement complet ! ### 5/5 — Shell, yeah! *2026-07-21, version 2026.25* Picked this up after getting into the homelab rabbit hole. A couple Raspberry Pis running various services plus a Debian box as the main hub. I needed something I could pull up on my phone to SSH in and poke around without hauling out a laptop, and this has been exactly that. I use it on my MacBook Air, iPad Air, and iPhone, and it syncs your hosts and keys across all three, so I'm not re-adding the same Pi three separate times. The SFTP side is just as useful as the terminal. Being able to browse and grab files off the Pi straight from Files on my phone saves me a ton of round trips. It's a one-time purchase rather than a subscription, and given how much I've used it just this week troubleshooting a stuck printer setup on one of my Pis, it's already paid for itself. One thing worth knowing: to actually reach your devices from outside your home network you'll need something like Tailscale set up alongside it, this isn't a standalone remote access solution on its own. I've only used it on my home network so far and it's been great there, testing it out and about is next on my list. ### 5/5 — Excellent! No Complaints *2026-07-19, version 2026.26* Works very well, polished. I’ll update if any issues arise. ### 5/5 — Very good *2026-07-19, version 2026.25* Use it every day, no complaints. ### 5/5 — Excellent SSH Client *2026-07-16, version 2026.25* I’ve used a couple of other SSH clients on my iPad, including some very highly regarded ones, and this one is easily the best I’ve used. It’s reliable, has some very nice-to-have more advanced features like scrolling and copy/paste, and doesn’t have annoying paper cuts like pop-ups that obstruct your view when using an external keyboard. ### 5/5 — Love the file searching *2026-07-11, version 2026.25* just got this love to be able to look at all my files using the iPhone folder application ### 5/5 — Wonderful App! *2026-07-11, version 2026.25* This app works great between iOS and Mac OS for quickly transitioning between devices. Works great for developing on the go with LLMs. ### 5/5 — Great Option for SSH Sessions *2026-07-10, version 2026.25* I find this to be as good as some way overpriced options. I’ve also been glad to see that it’s maintained fairly rapid updates. I ran into a couple of crashes early in my usage that seem to have been resolved since. ### 5/5 — great for sshing *2026-07-09, version 2026.25* over all this is a great app to ssh from the iphone. pair it with Runestone for text editing and the terminal world is your oyster! i'm really glad ShellFish exists. ### 5/5 — From a long time user *2026-07-08* A very useful app I use daily. The developer responded extremely quickly to a problem I was having. Recommended! ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Do Not Install - Will wear out your Mac’s SSD *2026-06-27, version 2026.21* This app has written 540GBs of bytes onto my SSD without in the background without me doing anything ### 1/5 — Potentially Good Software, Rotten Predatory Business Model *2026-06-23, version 2026.21* The terminal functionality is solid and the interface is clean — when the developer lets you see it. However, the app displays full-width animated scrolling banner ads that physically push the terminal display down and shrink the available screen real estate during active SSH sessions, including during first use, before you’ve had any opportunity to evaluate whether the app is worth $30. This is not advertising. A discrete static line above the keyboard row is advertising. What this does is deploy an animated, scrolling, impossible-to-ignore banner that actively degrades the terminal itself — shifting the display, reducing screen real estate, and interrupting your work — until you pay $30 to make it stop. The app is genuinely good when it isn’t doing this, which makes the behavior more frustrating, not less. The contrast between what the app could be and what the developer has chosen to make the trial experience tells you everything about the priorities here. I’m willing to support good developers. I’ve paid for plenty of software. But this is a hostage negotiation, not a trial. If the app is worth $30, demonstrate that by letting me actually use it. A one-week clean trial, or a static unobtrusive upgrade reminder, would be entirely reasonable and I’d likely have already paid. This approach guarantees I won’t. One star is actually three stars too many — Even one for the underlying functionality, Negative for the business model.

I tried it for about 30 minutes, determined this is unusable garbage, and because of the developers blatant and greedy business model he turned a sale into I’ll never bother with this again ever. ### 1/5 — Pricey yet flakey *2026-01-12* File provider integration does not work properly and sync is unusable. **Developer response:** Sorry to hear the app is working poorly for you. Please email me at anders@secureshellfish.app if you are willing to answer a few questions such that I can better understand the issues and make improvements. ### 1/5 — Come on *2025-08-28, version 2025.22* A subscription for a glorified file manager is ludicrous, who are these rich people who think this is ok? Just wanted to upload some files but seems to be blocked behind paywall so uninstalling. Response to the developer: I never said it should be free, my issue is with the parasitic subscription model. I pay for a lot of good apps with ethical pricing, which yours does not have. ### 1/5 — Got a notification asking for a review *2025-05-24, version 2025.14* This application popped a system notification asking for a review. I paid for this app and had hoped that would allow me to avoid this kind of interruption ### 1/5 — Big price increase *2025-01-12, version 2025.1* Nice app with excellent features, but it’s disappointing that the lifetime price has more than doubled in less than 2 months. I was planning to take advantage of the lifetime offer, but this steep price hike has put me off. A real pity. ### 1/5 — 广告太频繁了 *2024-12-31* 广告太频繁了 ### 1/5 — Exfiltrates ssh passwords *2024-11-27, version 2024.23* This app exfiltrates your ssh configuration to to the cloud without an opt in to sync. Set up ssh on iPad, it copied the login information to an iPhone on the same Apple account without opt in on the iPad. While I actually like this feature being available conceptually, it definitely is unacceptable to copy passwords or private keys over the network without informed consent. ### 1/5 — 配置连接后就付费 *2021-11-04* 直接搞成付费软件好了… 免费下载干嘛，配置好了ip连接… 然后就提示付费才能用 垃圾 **Developer response:** 对我来说最重要的是，没有人为应用程序支付并发抱它。 您可以配置服务器并使用15天的试验来决定应用程序是否为您。 ———————————————— The most important thing to me is that nobody pays for the app and regrets it. You can configure a server and use the 15 day trial to decide if the app is something for you. ### 1/5 — Crash!! *2021-02-05, version 2021.7* A simple terminal command when connected to some server (ex, raspberry pi), -> “sudo reboot” must not crash your app!! Do you even test your own app before releasing it?? I remember I lost bunch of very critical and personal data in the very beginning when this app just came up - but I thought give it another shot. Not ready! Not recommended! Except, the “rental” integration! ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Works! *2026-08-21, version 2026.27* Great SFTP & Terminal App. Works perfect. ### 5/5 — Just right *2026-08-21, version 2026.27* Shellfish is a cheery terminal client I reach for 1st on iOS ### 5/5 — Excellent app *2026-08-20, version 2026.27* Can’t fault it ### 5/5 — Best SSH client with MacOS and iOS integration *2026-08-20, version 2026.26* I love this app. Integrates with Finder/Files and easy setup for terminal access. Enjoy using it with Bbedit too as the editor. ### 5/5 — Amazing *2026-08-19, version 2026.27* Amazing really good client. Lots of features, fair pricing. ### 5/5 — The BEST SSH client on the App Store! *2026-08-17, version 2026.26* I’ve been using ShellFish for years, and it has quickly become my favorite SSH client on any platform (though it’s only for Apple products)! ### 5/5 — A wonderful app *2026-08-14, version 2026.26* Shellfish provides the perfect combination of features for my needs. It’s simple to use, fast to set up, and available on both iOS and MacOS. It’s just great ### 5/5 — Great with Claude code and tmux *2026-08-14, version 2026.26* Great with Claude code and tmux ### 5/5 — great app *2026-08-12, version 2026.26* although it's not (yet) as feature rich as some alternatives, it's developing at an incredible pace. and i love that everything syncs between macos and ios, which means I don't have to carry my laptop around with me all the time. keep up the great work ### 5/5 — Every day *2026-08-12, version 2026.26* Love the app…no complaints…wish we could have had something similar about 15 years ago…who knows where we’d be. --- *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 2026-08-27.*