Multiplex vs Pier Shell

Multiplex is a terminal for people who live inside persistent remote sessions — open source, built native for iPhone and iPad. THE WALL Hosts probe concurrently. Every session is a live monitor: its actual last screen lines, red LIVE while attached. See the fleet before attaching; NO SIGNAL reconnects in one tap. Run tmux, or switch a host to herdr — one tile per session, agent state from herdr itself. A SESSION WHERE YOU NEED IT On iPad each session opens in a real scene for Stage Manager, Split View, and external displays. Merge windows into tabs and split them back out — the SSH connection and scrollback move with the tab, so shells never drop. On iPhone, the wall and terminal share one adaptive full-screen shell. BUILT FOR AI AGENT SESSIONS Start Claude Code, Codex, Pi, Grok Build, Antigravity CLI, or Hermes with a setup script, model, and first prompt in one step. Multiplex spots all six in any pane; helper chips follow the foreground agent — commands reach the process receiving your keystrokes; rearrange or add your own, synced everywhere. A message box takes longer prompts: autocorrect, dictation, attached or dropped files land in the pane's directory, sent as one message. Pro lifts the daily chip limit, alerts you when an unwatched turn ends or needs input (Claude Code, Codex, Grok Build on tmux; all agents on herdr), and opens Claude Code prompt history with transcript jumps. FILES & LINKS BESIDE THE TERMINAL Tap a link or path — Multiplex confirms the resolved target first. Files open read-only in the ▤ File Viewer: code, rendered Markdown, images, PDFs, sound files, git diffs. Web links can open in an inline ⌗ viewport. On iPad both land in a side panel beside the pane — the terminal never changes size — or move into a tab. WIDGETS & SHORTCUTS Put a host on your Home Screen — last-known frames, an honest SEEN stamp, SHELL and AGENT keys straight into a connection — or a fleet widget for every host at a glance. Shortcuts and Siri open a shell, show a remote file, or launch an agent in a chosen directory, fresh or inside an existing session. A multiplex:// URL scheme drives automations. MOSH BUILT IN With Pro, switch a host to mosh and the session survives sleep, roaming, and IP changes — a native Swift mosh client, no companion app. CONNECTION STATS A live latency chip on every host rail; Pro opens the full per-host board: round-trips, typing echo, mosh loss and roams, reconnects, data volume. Measured in-session; nothing leaves the device. A REAL TERMINAL xterm-256color emulation, multilingual system-keyboard input, touch and pointer clicks for mouse TUIs, hardware keyboards, live PTY resize, and a menu of everyday tmux (or herdr) commands. Hold CTRL for Key Commands: saved chords the software keyboard cannot press (Shift+Enter, a double Ctrl-C) and one-line text macros, synced everywhere. Pane-clamped selection on long press or double tap. System, Light, and Dark switch the whole chassis, each with its own terminal theme — ten built in; Pro adds an editor down to all 16 ANSI colors. The app speaks English, Traditional Chinese, and Japanese. OPEN SOURCE, PRIVATE BY DESIGN The complete app — terminal engine, mosh client, and all — is open source, Apache 2.0, at github.com/multiplex-term/Multiplex. Read the code that holds your keys, or build it yourself. Hosts, command setups, and secrets sync through iCloud Keychain, end-to-end encrypted. Nothing touches our servers — there are none. No account, no analytics, no tracking. MULTIPLEX PRO One purchase, no subscription: unlimited hosts, mosh, agent notifications, the Connection Stats board, the unmetered command strip, custom themes, and twelve Key Commands. Free includes two hosts, the complete terminal, five Key Commands, and 10 chip taps a day. WHAT YOU NEED A remote host reachable over SSH (password or ed25519/RSA key). The wall and persistent sessions need tmux 1.8+ or herdr 0.7.5+; plain SSH shells need neither. mosh needs mosh-server on the host.

No separate account required Pier works with your existing iCloud account to keep supported data synchronized across your Apple devices. There’s no Pier registration, username, or password to manage. Pier is a native SSH and SFTP client built for developers who want a simple, fast way to access their servers from iPhone and Mac. Add your hosts once and keep them synced privately through iCloud. Connect to production, staging, personal servers, Raspberry Pis, and more without rebuilding your setup on every device. Pier is designed to feel at home on Apple platforms, with a clean native interface, fast terminal performance, and secure key handling.