Orca IDE vs vmux Agent Console
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
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.
- 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
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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.
vmux Agent Console
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vmux is a native companion app for the self-hosted vmux server, built for developers running multiple CLI coding agents in tmux. Connect to your vmux server over LAN, Tailscale, or an SSH tunnel, then monitor which panes are idle, working, blocked for input, or in error. The app keeps the attention queue first, so the panes that need you are easy to find. Features: - Queue, Active, All, and tree views for tmux panes - Pane detail view with recent terminal output - Tappable menu choices for supported coding-agent prompts - Custom shortcut keys and saved snippets - Broadcast messages to multiple panes - Server settings and connected-session management - Optional APNs alerts from your own vmux server when a pane needs input - iPhone and iPad layouts vmux is self-hosted. There is no vmux cloud account, no third-party analytics, no advertising SDK, and no developer-operated relay. Your app talks to the server address you configure, and tokens are stored in the system Keychain.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Orca IDE at every 3 days against vmux Agent Console's every 10 days. Orca IDE also leads on chart position (#19 vs unranked) and iOS requirement (15.1 vs 17.0). On price, ads, in-app purchases 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
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Orca IDE ships an update every 3 days, vmux Agent Console every 10 days. The most recent releases landed on September 28, 2026 and September 8, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Orca IDE | vmux Agent Console |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.7 (25 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 93.1% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 25 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 3 days — better | Every 10 days |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Best chart rank | #19 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch |
| Requires iOS | 15.1 — better | 17.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 40 MB | 11 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Lovecast LLC | Yui Pan YAU |
In-app purchases
Orca IDE
No in-app purchases
vmux Agent Console
No in-app purchases





