Shell Drop vs Text Editor
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Shell Drop
A native terminal app for iOS devices that allows users to run AI agents via SSH. It supports image and file uploads, tmux integration, and voice input for commands. Secure SSH key authentication and iCloud sync are included.
- Run AI agents via SSH
- Image and file uploads
- Tmux session management
- Voice input for commands
- SSH key authentication
- iCloud sync for connections
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ShellDrop is a fast, native terminal for iPhone, iPad and iPhone Duo, built for running AI agents: Claude Code, Codex, Grok, Hermes, OpenClaw, opencode, anything that lives in tmux on a Mac mini, VPS or any box you can SSH into. WORK WITH YOUR AGENTS - Paste images straight into a session. Copy a screenshot from any app, paste it in the terminal, and your agent reads it. - Attach files too. Tap the paperclip in the toolbar to pick a file from Files, or a photo or video from your library, and it uploads to the server for your agent to read. - You choose the upload size limit. Settings goes from 100 MB to 1 GB, and if a file is over, ShellDrop offers to raise it on the spot. - Tmux aware. Vertical swipe scrolls history, horizontal swipe switches sessions. - Tab names sync with the real tmux session names automatically. - Sessions stay alive in the background while you switch apps. - Agent to clipboard. Ask your agent to write an email, say "copy that to my clipboard", and it lands on your phone ready to paste into your mail app. - Droplet Visualizer: the feature nobody asked for. See all your sessions from the perspective of an Egyptian god. BUILT LIKE A REAL TERMINAL - SSH key authentication. Generate Ed25519 keys or hardware-backed Secure Enclave keys in-app, where the private key never leaves the chip. - Paste-import your existing OpenSSH keys. - The keyboard toolbar is yours. Tap and hold to rearrange the keys you use most, and create your own custom Tmux key bindings. - Sticky ctrl for all of your perverted tmux activities. - Text selection with a dedicated selection mode, long-press word select, and one-tap links. - Nerd Fonts. FiraCode and JetBrains Mono render the glyphs nvim and LazyVim need. - Full screen mode for extra real estate. - Full iPad support including 13" iPad Pro, plus hardware keyboards. - iCloud sync keeps saved connections on every device, and you can switch it off in Settings any time. Private keys stay on your device by design. NO SUBSCRIPTION Every feature included. VOICE DROP Tap the mic on the keyboard toolbar and talk. Your words drop into the prompt at the cursor. Transcription runs on-device with Apple speech, or through your own Groq API key for whisper-large-v3-turbo. Nothing sends until you hit return. Prefer a dictation keyboard like Wispr Flow? Works great here too. PRIVACY Credentials live in the iOS keychain on your device. There is no account, and no telemetry or analytics are collected. Terminal traffic goes to your servers over SSH and nowhere else. Built by an indie developer who runs AI agents every day.
Text Editor
A professional code and text editor for developers, students, and creators. It offers fast performance, extensive language support, and advanced editing features for a smooth and reliable coding experience on Apple devices.
- Professional code and text editing
- Fast and lightweight performance
- Tree-sitter powered syntax highlighting
- Smart autocomplete and code suggestions
- Built-in snippets for popular languages
- Format code with Prettier
- 30+ professionally designed themes
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Text Editor is a fast, modern, and powerful code editor built for developers, students, and creators who want a professional coding experience on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Vision Pro. Write, edit, and manage code with support for many popular programming, scripting, and markup languages all in one lightweight and easy-to-use editor. Whether you are building websites, editing configuration files, writing scripts, learning programming, or taking technical notes, Text Editor provides a smooth and reliable workspace designed for productivity. Supported Languages: Swift, C, C++, C#, Objective-C, Go, Rust, Java, Kotlin, JavaScript, TypeScript, JSX, TSX, Python, Ruby, PHP, Lua, Perl, Bash, SQL, HTML, CSS, SCSS, JSON, JSON5, YAML, TOML, Markdown, Astro, Regex, Elixir, Haskell, Plain Text, and many more. Features: - Professional code and text editing - Fast and lightweight performance - Tree-sitter powered syntax highlighting - Smart autocomplete and code suggestions - Built-in snippets for popular languages - Context-aware suggestions with fuzzy matching - Auto-close brackets, quotes, and tags - Find and replace - Go to line - Undo and redo support - Duplicate and move lines quickly - Advanced keyboard editing controls - Format code with Prettier - Support for HTML, CSS, JavaScript, TypeScript, JSON, YAML, Markdown, and PHP formatting - Adjustable tab width, line length, quote style, trailing commas, prose wrap, and more - Beautiful built-in light and dark themes - 30+ professionally designed themes included - Popular themes inspired by One Dark Pro, Dracula, Monokai, Solarized, Nord, GitHub Dark, Tokyo Night, Material, Paper, and more - Import and export custom themes - App-wide adaptive color scheme - Fully customizable keyboard accessory bar - Quick access coding symbols and actions - Powerful editing actions including indent, outdent, duplicate lines, move lines, and cursor navigation - Searchable advanced font picker with support for custom fonts - Adjustable font size, line height, and letter spacing - Multiple text encodings with automatic detection - Choose between UTF-8, UTF-16, ISO Latin 1, and many more encodings - Line ending detection and preservation (LF and CRLF) - Enable or disable auto-correction - Enable or disable auto-capitalization - Enable or disable spell-checking - Hardware keyboard shortcuts for save, find, format, comments, and navigation - Auto-save and unsaved changes protection - Native Files app integration - Open, edit, and share files easily - Share Sheet support - Print documents directly from the app - Optimized for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Vision Pro Built for Productivity: Text Editor is designed to help you stay focused with a clean interface, responsive performance, and powerful developer tools that make coding easier anywhere. Perfect for web development, mobile app development, backend scripting, configuration editing, Markdown writing, learning programming, technical notes, and everyday text editing. Simple enough for beginners. Powerful enough for professional developers.
Screenshots
Verdict
Shell Drop and Text Editor both sit at 5.0 stars, but that hides the real split: 100% of Shell Drop's written reviews are positive against 0% of Text Editor's. Shell Drop also leads on update cadence (every 9 days vs monthly) and chart position (#169 vs unranked). Text Editor's advantage is ratings volume (23 vs 3). On price, rating, 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.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Shell Drop against 5.0 for Text Editor. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Text Editor has 23 ratings behind it against 3, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 100% of Shell Drop's written reviews are positive against 0% of Text Editor's.
Shell Drop ships an update every 9 days, Text Editor monthly. The most recent releases landed on November 7, 2026 and November 5, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Shell Drop | Text Editor |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (3 ratings) | 5.0 (23 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better | 0.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 3 | 23 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 9 days — better | Monthly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | Free |
| Best chart rank | #169 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 17.0 | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 16 MB | 53 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Daniel Bilsborough | Devashy Rangpariya |
Customer experience
Shell Drop
Text Editor
In-app purchases
Shell Drop
No in-app purchases
Text Editor
No in-app purchases









