Comparison

Shell Drop vs Text Editor

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Shell Drop

This app provides a native terminal experience for iOS and iPadOS, designed for running AI agents via SSH. It allows seamless integration with AI models by enabling image and file uploads directly into sessions, with customizable upload limits. Features include tmux awareness, secure SSH key authentication, and on-device voice input for commands.

Highlights
  • AI agent integration
  • Image and file uploads
  • Tmux session management
  • SSH key authentication
  • On-device voice input
  • Customizable keyboard toolbar
Features
Read full description

ShellDrop is a fast, native terminal for iPhone, iPad and Vision Pro, 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.

About

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.

Highlights
  • 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
Features
Read full description

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

Shell Drop4 screens
Text Editor4 screens

Verdict

The call

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). Text Editor's advantage is ratings volume (13 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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Shell Drop against 5.0 for Text Editor. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 3 and 13 respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 100% of Shell Drop's written reviews are positive against 0% of Text Editor's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Shell Drop ships an update every 9 days, Text Editor monthly. The most recent releases landed on September 29, 2026 and October 9, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 7 level
Shell Drop versus Text Editor: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterShell DropText Editor
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (3 ratings)5.0 (13 ratings)
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews — better0.0% of reviews
Number of ratings313 — better
Update frequencyEvery 9 days — betterMonthly
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationFreeFree
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPad
Requires iOS17.017.0
Further details — not scored
Size15 MB53 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperDaniel BilsboroughDevashy Rangpariya

Customer experience

Shell Drop

All ratings3 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

Text Editor

All ratings13 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews1 reviews
Positive0.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative100.0%

In-app purchases

None

Shell Drop

No in-app purchases

None

Text Editor

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Shell Drop free?
Shell Drop is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Text Editor free?
Text Editor is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Shell Drop or Text Editor?
Shell Drop and Text Editor are both rated 5.0 out of 5 on the App Store, from 3 and 13 ratings respectively.
Do Shell Drop or Text Editor have ads?
Neither Shell Drop nor Text Editor shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Shell Drop or Text Editor?
Shell Drop ships an update every 9 days, and Text Editor monthly. Most recently, Shell Drop was updated on September 29, 2026 and Text Editor on October 9, 2026.

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