Orca IDE vs Kanna Mobile
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.
Kanna Mobile
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Kanna Mobile is a companion for the Kanna desktop app for macOS. It lets you follow and steer coding-agent tasks from your iPhone while the work runs on your Mac. Kanna Mobile requires a Mac running the Kanna desktop app. It is not a standalone coding-agent host, and it does not run agents on your phone. WHAT YOU CAN DO • See every task across your repositories, grouped by status and activity • Open a task and watch its terminal and agent output stream live • Send follow-up instructions when an agent stops and asks a question • Start new tasks against a repository and agent of your choosing • Review diffs and file contents an agent has touched • Get a notification when a task needs you TWO WAYS TO CONNECT On your local network, pair directly with your Mac by scanning a QR code. No account, no sign-up, nothing leaves your network. Away from home, cloud access relays the connection between your phone and your Mac. Cloud access needs a Kanna account and is currently invite-only — request one at kanna.build/support. BUILT FOR PEOPLE RUNNING SEVERAL AGENTS Kanna gives every task its own git worktree, branch, and agent session, then moves it through a workflow: implement, review, pull request. Kanna Mobile is the window into that from wherever you ff before lunch, an agent stuck on a question, a reviewyou want to read on the train. Kanna works with the coding-agent CLIs you already have installed on your Mac. A NOTE ON WHAT YOU'LL SEE Kanna is a developer tool. It displays repository names, branch names, task prompts, and raw terminal output from your own machine. Requires the Kanna desktop app for macOS, available at kanna.build.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is chart position: Orca IDE at #18 against Kanna Mobile's unranked. Orca IDE also leads on device support (3 vs 1). On price, ads, in-app purchases and iOS requirement 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.
| Parameter | Orca IDE | Kanna Mobile |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.6 (47 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 86.5% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 47 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 3 days | — |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free | — |
| Best chart rank | #18 — better | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 15.1 — better | 16.4 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 41 MB | 42 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Lovecast LLC | Tampopo LLC |
In-app purchases
Orca IDE
No in-app purchases
Kanna Mobile
No in-app purchases








