Comparison

Orca IDE vs dotMux easy SSH with tmux

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

Head to head
About

Orca IDE

This app mirrors your desktop terminal sessions, including AI agent interactions, directly to your iPhone. It provides full keyboard input and multi-terminal support for seamless remote coding management. All processing remains on your desktop, ensuring your data stays secure.

Highlights
  • Live desktop terminal mirror
  • AI agent session management
  • Full keyboard input
  • Multi-worktree, multi-terminal support
  • Phone-fit zoom and smart keyboard
  • Background command execution
  • End-to-end encrypted pairing
Features
Read full description

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.

About

dotMux easy SSH with tmux

Features
Read full description

Stop fighting tmux on a touchscreen. dotMux speaks tmux control mode natively and rebuilds your remote workspace as real iOS UI — the way iTerm2 does on the Mac. Windows and panes become native tabs and views you drive by touch. NATIVE tmux, NOT raw text - Remote tmux windows become native tabs. - Every pane becomes a native view — focused full-screen on iPhone, true side-by-side splits on iPad. - Split, resize, and close panes from the app — pane menu, long-press, drag the divider, or keyboard shortcuts. - The window and pane pickers render your real terminals, live: pick a window by what's in it, not by its name. - Select and copy text with native handles; tap links in the terminal to open them. - If a host has no tmux, dotMux falls back gracefully to a plain terminal. EVERY HOST AT ONCE - Connect to as many hosts as you like at once. Leaving a terminal doesn't disconnect it — work keeps running on every host you have open. - The host list is the connection switcher: live hosts marked where you already look, one tap away. - Group hosts into folders; each folder shows what's connected inside it. - Forward a remote port over SSH and open your server's web UI inside dotMux. REAL SSH, DONE RIGHT - Password and public-key authentication. - Import your ed25519 or ECDSA (P-256) keys by paste or from Files — passphrase-protected keys included. - Or generate a key in the Secure Enclave: non-exportable, signed in-chip, never leaving the device. - Review and forget trusted host keys. - Connect directly from your device to your own servers. No middleman, no developer backend. PICK UP WHERE YOU LEFT OFF - The session picker lists every tmux session on the host and marks the ones already attached. - Switch sessions in place, or create named ones on the fly. - iOS suspended the app? Jobs keep running on the server, and dotMux re-attaches and rebuilds your tabs and panes when you come back. A KEYBOARD BUILT FOR TERMINALS - A helper bar with the keys terminals actually need: Esc, Ctrl, Tab and more. - Fully customizable: add, remove, and reorder every key — F-keys, Ctrl combos, arrows, even your own text. - Snippets: save commands globally or per host and run them again without typing them. - A multi-line composer for drafting long commands and agent prompts, sent in one go. - A drag-pad arrow joystick with press-and-hold repeat, sticky modifiers, and a hide-to-floating-dock control when you want the screen back. - Paste images from your clipboard — annotate them first if you like; dotMux uploads them and pastes the path (built for Claude Code). MAKE IT YOURS - Terminal fonts: JetBrains Mono, Fira Code, Hack, IBM Plex Mono and more. - Color themes with live preview: Dracula, Nord, Solarized, Gruvbox, Tokyo Night and more — or import any Ghostty or iTerm2 theme from a file or URL. - Pinch to zoom with a live cols × rows readout; keep the screen awake while connected. AUTOMATE IT - Shortcuts support: connect to a host, send a command, read the output back. Unattended runs, enabled per credential, for automations that can't stop to ask for Face ID. SECURITY THAT STAYS ON YOUR DEVICE - Face ID app-lock, plus a second Face ID gate per credential, with a short configurable grace period. - Credentials live in the Keychain and Secure Enclave, bound to this device — never synced to iCloud, never sent anywhere. - A privacy cover hides the terminal in the app switcher. - dotMux collects no data. No analytics, no tracking, no ads, no account, no sign-up. MADE FOR iPad TOO - One universal app for iPhone and iPad. - Open hosts side by side in multiple windows; built for hardware keyboard and trackpad. PRICING - Free: save and connect to one host, fully featured. - Unlimited Hosts: a one-time $1.99 purchase to save as many servers as you like. No subscription. Restore Purchases supported. Note: RSA keys are not supported (modern OpenSSH disables the SHA-1 ssh-rsa signature). Use ed25519, ECDSA (P-256), or a Secure Enclave key.

Screenshots

Orca IDE4 screens
dotMux easy SSH with tmux4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Orca IDE at none against dotMux easy SSH with tmux's 1. Orca IDE also leads on update cadence (every 3 days vs every 3 weeks) and chart position (#18 vs unranked). On price, ads and device support 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. dotMux easy SSH with tmux sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. Orca IDE asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Orca IDE ships an update every 3 days, dotMux easy SSH with tmux every 3 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 25, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard4 real differences · 7 level
Orca IDE versus dotMux easy SSH with tmux: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterOrca IDEdotMux easy SSH with tmux
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.6 (47 ratings) — better—
Positive reviews86.5% of reviews—
Number of ratings47 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 3 days — betterEvery 3 weeks
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationFree—
Best chart rank#18 — better—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPod — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS15.1 — better26.0
Further details — not scored
Size41 MB30 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperLovecast LLCFree Tomorrow

In-app purchases

None

Orca IDE

No in-app purchases

1 purchases

dotMux easy SSH with tmux

One-time1
  • dotMux — Unlimited Hosts$1.99

Questions

Is Orca IDE free?
Orca IDE is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is dotMux easy SSH with tmux free?
dotMux easy SSH with tmux is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Orca IDE or dotMux easy SSH with tmux have ads?
Neither Orca IDE nor dotMux easy SSH with tmux shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Orca IDE or dotMux easy SSH with tmux?
Orca IDE ships an update every 3 days, and dotMux easy SSH with tmux every 3 weeks. Most recently, Orca IDE was updated on October 25, 2026 and dotMux easy SSH with tmux on October 24, 2026.

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