Orca IDE vs MuxPad

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.

MuxPad is a native tmux terminal built from the ground up for iPad. Unlike ordinary SSH apps that draw a single terminal screen, MuxPad runs tmux control mode (tmux -CC) over SSH and maps tmux sessions, windows, and panes directly onto a native iPad interface. NATIVE TMUX PANES & WINDOWS Windows become tabs and splits become real split views. Every pane has native scrollback, selection, and copy, with flow control that stays smooth under heavy output. FULL HARDWARE KEYBOARD CONTROL Drive tmux from an external keyboard exactly like the desktop. Control characters, Option as Meta, arrow and function keys, Home/End/Page Up/Down, the tmux prefix (Ctrl-b), and vi/emacs copy-mode keys are all sent as the correct bytes. Fine-tune with Option as Meta and Caps Lock as Ctrl/Esc. On the software keyboard, a horizontally scrolling accessory bar gives you Esc, Ctrl, arrows, the prefix, and a dismiss key. DUAL-PANE SFTP FILE MANAGER Put a local folder or any remote host in each of the two panes and move files by drag and drop. Transfer local-to-remote and remote-to-remote (relayed through your device). Long-press to multi-select and copy or move files in bulk. A transfer queue handles progress, resume, and conflicts. TMUX-NATIVE SCROLLING Two-finger and trackpad scrolling is forwarded to tmux as mouse-wheel input, so scrolling drives tmux copy-mode just like on the desktop (requires tmux mouse mode). SESSION PERSISTENCE & CROSS-DEVICE RECONNECT tmux sessions live on the server. Quit the app completely or switch devices and your session is still there. Reconnect manually or automatically with no loss, and pick up an iPad session on your iPhone. iCLOUD SYNC Hosts, reusable users, mux sessions, and groups all sync through your private iCloud (SwiftData + CloudKit) — on change and on launch. Credentials never touch CloudKit: passwords and keys stay in the Keychain (and iCloud Keychain, end-to-end encrypted), and only a reference is synced. Protect access with Face ID / Touch ID. LIVE ACTIVITY See your connected sessions on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island. Tap a session to deep-link straight back into the app. One unified activity that ends automatically when you close the app. ENGLISH & KOREAN The interface is in English and switches to Korean automatically on Korean devices. ALSO INCLUDED - Host chaining (ProxyJump) through a jump host into private networks - ed25519 / RSA key and password authentication, known_hosts fingerprint verification (MITM warning) - Preset and custom themes, monospaced and Nerd Font support - Sidebar host management: inline rename, drag to reorder, groups IMPORTANT — YOUR SERVER NEEDS TMUX MuxPad is built on tmux control mode. The remote server you connect to must have tmux installed (detected automatically on connect); if it is not, the connection is blocked and installation guidance is shown. There is no local shell emulation. MuxPad does not collect your data. It has no ads and no analytics or tracking SDKs. Your server credentials and activity are never sent to the developer.