Nice SSH vs ShellDiver
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Nice SSH
A secure and intuitive remote connection manager for servers. It offers a fast terminal, SSH access with key authentication, SFTP file transfers, and VNC for visual control. The app features encrypted key storage and cross-device sync for seamless management.
- Fast and responsive terminal
- Secure SSH with key authentication
- SFTP file transfer
- VNC remote desktop access
- Encrypted SSH key storage
- Cross-device sync
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Manage All Your Servers in One Place A powerful and intuitive remote connection manager designed for developers system administrators and anyone working with servers Connect manage and control your infrastructure easily and securely from one app Key Features Terminal Access a fast and responsive terminal for command line operations SSH Securely connect to your servers with support for password and key authentication SFTP Transfer and manage files easily with built in SFTP support VNC Access remote desktops and control your machines visually Encrypted Key Storage Store your SSH keys securely with encryption Customizable Interface Personalize the app to match your workflow and preferences Cross Device Sync Sync your data across iPhone iPad and Mac to keep everything up to date Built for Productivity Manage production servers development environments or personal machines with ease Secure and Reliable Designed with security and performance in mind for stable and protected connections
ShellDiver
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With software, free is usually a question rather than an answer. Here it is arithmetic: no server of ours, no accounts, no analytics — nothing for a subscription to pay for. Sync, startup commands, port forwarding: all of it is in the app. WHERE YOUR KEYS LIVE In your device's keychain. ShellDiver has no account and no sign-in — there is simply nowhere on our side for anything of yours to sit. An Ed25519 key either travels with you through iCloud Keychain, end-to-end encrypted, or stays on this device behind Face ID. A Secure Enclave key is created inside the security chip. It cannot be read out — not even by ShellDiver — never leaves the device, and will ask for Face ID on every sign-in if you want it to. THE VAULT Instead of iCloud you can take syncing into your own hands: an encrypted file in a place you choose. A USB stick, a cloud folder, or your own WebDAV server, so Nextcloud, ownCloud, a Synology, an Apache with mod_dav. It works across different Apple IDs and carries the secrets with it: saved server passwords and private keys. Only your devices encrypt and decrypt. Whoever runs the storage location sees nothing but unreadable files. You add a second device with a QR code, without typing your passphrase there. THE TERMINAL It does not hang up because you looked somewhere else for a minute: the connection belongs to the session, not to the screen. The running build and the half-typed line are still there when you come back. Up to 20 sessions as tabs, terminals and files mixed. Real xterm emulation: colour, UTF-8, resizing that works — htop, vim and colourful logs look the way you expect. Plus search through the scrollback, your choice of monospaced font including Nerd Fonts, and five colour schemes. On iPhone there is a row above the keyboard with esc, ctrl, tab, arrows and a paste key, because a phone has no ⌘V. When the link drops, ShellDiver notices through keepalives and rebuilds it by itself. This is SSH, not Mosh: the new shell starts fresh. SIGNING IN WITHOUT GUESSING ShellDiver asks the server which methods it offers and works through whatever it holds credentials for. That covers publickey followed by keyboard-interactive — 2FA after the key — and equally a server that only offers keyboard-interactive while the host is saved as "password". One-time codes are never pre-filled and never stored. You confirm a host key once, by its fingerprint. Every connection after that checks it, and a key that has changed is refused rather than waved through. THROUGH A JUMP HOST When a server is only open on the inside, you give it a jump host — OpenSSH's ProxyJump. The jump host then forwards nothing but encrypted bytes and cannot read along; both sign-ins are signed on this device. So your key does not have to sit on the machine in between, and a Secure Enclave key works here too. FILES AND TUNNELS The SFTP browser downloads and uploads, whole folders included, renames, and deletes recursively. Local port forwarding brings a database or an admin interface onto this device. It listens on 127.0.0.1 only and cannot be reached from outside; each rule holds its own connection, so a tunnel does not fall with a terminal. WHAT YOU ALREADY HAVE Your ~/.ssh/config is imported, with each IdentityFile matched against the keys you have and any ProxyJump resolved; so is known_hosts, hashed entries as far as they can be matched. Keys come in as Ed25519, RSA or ECDSA — from the OpenSSH container, from PuTTY's .ppk (v2 and v3), and from the PEM family. A passphrase on the file is used once during import and not kept. Snippets are also the buttons above the keyboard — global or bound to one host, with a confirmation step if you want one. One per host runs by itself as soon as the shell is open. The backup is a JSON file you can read — secrets sit inside an encrypted block under a passphrase you choose. Without it nobody gets at them, us included.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is iOS requirement: Nice SSH at 16.0 against ShellDiver's 18.0. 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.
Nice SSH ships an update every 3 days, ShellDiver every 4 days. The most recent releases landed on September 30, 2026 and September 17, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Nice SSH | ShellDiver |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (3 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 3 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 3 days — better | Every 4 days |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Mac | iPhone, iPad, Mac |
| Requires iOS | 16.0 — better | 18.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 22 MB | 11 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 12+ |
| Developer | Thuc Do Van | Mathias Oysmueller |
In-app purchases
Nice SSH
No in-app purchases
ShellDiver
No in-app purchases





