ActivitySmith vs Orca IDE
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
ActivitySmith
Stream real-time progress and outcomes of long-running tasks to your iOS device's Lock Screen and Dynamic Island. Receive high-signal alerts for critical events via push notifications. Integrates with various backend services and development tools.
- Live Activities for Lock Screen and Dynamic Island
- Push Notifications for alerts
- Update via HTTP requests
- Track CI/CD, jobs, and events
- Pair devices and create API keys
- Widgets for lock screen metrics
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ActivitySmith lets you send Live Activities and Push Notifications to your iOS device(s) from any backend. Keep long-running work visible at a glance: stream progress, step-by-step status, and outcomes to your Lock Screen and Dynamic Island. Use Push Notifications for high-signal alerts (failures, incidents, signups, sales, crashes, etc). Anything that can make an HTTP request can update a Live Activity or send a Push Notification - CI/CD, servers, cron, agents, webhooks, or plain curl. Use cases: - CI/CD deployments and build pipelines - Long-running jobs (migrations, backups, ETL) and background agents - On-call alerts and incident workflows - Business events (sales, signups, trial conversions) - Home Automation How it works: - Install ActivitySmith and pair your device - Create API key - Send custom Push Notifications with a simple API call - Trigger Live Activities to track deployments or any other long-running processes in a real-time - Target one or more paired devices as needed - Use widgets to track key metrics from your lock screen SDKs: Node.js, PHP, Ruby, Python, Go, CLI Integrations: GitHub, GitLab, Vercel, Railway, Netlify, Sentry, Linear, Zapier, n8n, and more...
Orca IDE
Control your coding environment remotely from your phone. Mirror your desktop terminal, manage AI agent sessions, and interact with your code using a smart on-screen keyboard. All your data remains on your desktop, with secure, end-to-end encrypted local network connections.
- Live desktop terminal mirror
- AI agent session management
- Full keyboard input
- Multi-worktree support
- Phone-fit zoom and smart keyboard
- Background command execution
- End-to-end encrypted pairing
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Orca Mobile is the companion app for Orca, the open-source agentic coding workspace for macOS, Linux, and Windows. Pair your iPhone to your desktop in seconds and pick up a terminal session from the couch, the kitchen, or across the office. WHAT IT DOES • Live mirror of your desktop terminal, including running AI agent sessions (Claude Code, Codex, custom CLIs). • Full keyboard input — type, tab-complete, Ctrl-C, scroll back, all from the phone. • Multi-worktree, multi-terminal: jump between projects with a tap. • Phone-fit zoom and a smart on-screen keyboard with quick Ctrl/Alt accessory keys and shortcuts. • Background long-running commands and get a notification when a TUI goes idle (e.g. when Claude finishes thinking). HOW IT WORKS Orca Mobile is a thin client. Nothing runs on your phone except the viewer. Your code, your shells, your AI agents — all of that stays on your desktop. The phone shows you what's happening and forwards your keystrokes back over an encrypted local-network connection. Pairing is end-to-end encrypted. Your desktop generates a one-time keypair and shows a QR code; you scan it from the app. After that, all traffic between phone and desktop is sealed with that pair's keys. PRIVACY • No analytics SDK, no crash reporter, no third-party SDKs of any kind in the iOS app. • Pairing tokens and your preference list live in the app's own sandbox. The app's traffic to your desktop is end-to-end encrypted on your local network only. • The Orca desktop app collects anonymized usage metrics per the policy at https://www.onorca.dev/privacy. The mobile app itself does not. • Open source: every line is auditable at https://github.com/stablyai/orca. REQUIREMENTS • An iPhone (iOS 16+) on the same Wi-Fi as your desktop. • The Orca desktop app, free, from https://www.onorca.dev/ or https://github.com/stablyai/orca/releases.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is ratings volume: Orca IDE at 71 against ActivitySmith's 1. Orca IDE also leads on chart position (#18 vs unranked) and iOS requirement (15.1 vs 18.0). ActivitySmith's advantage is rating (5.0 vs 4.7) and review sentiment (100% vs 85%). On price, update cadence, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
ActivitySmith holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.7. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Orca IDE has 71 ratings behind it against 1, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 100% of ActivitySmith's written reviews are positive against 85% of Orca IDE's.
ActivitySmith ships an update weekly, Orca IDE every 4 days. Both last shipped on November 5, 2026.
| Parameter | ActivitySmith | Orca IDE |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) — better | 4.7 (71 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better | 85.5% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 71 — better |
| Update frequency | Weekly | Every 4 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Best chart rank | — | #18 — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 18.0 | 15.1 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 11 MB | 47 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Adam Bardon | Lovecast LLC |
Customer experience
ActivitySmith
Orca IDE
In-app purchases
ActivitySmith
No in-app purchases
Orca IDE
No in-app purchases









