Remote terminal · iOS & iPadOS

Your Mac's terminal,
in your pocket.

Control and observe any terminal on your Mac from your iPhone or iPad — from anywhere in the world. The shells you're already in, live in your hand.

End-to-end encrypted No SSH setup No open ports No accounts
ConnectedWork MacBook Pro
End-to-end encryptedrelay sees ciphertext
iTerm2 220×50ttys001
esctab space
Works across every terminal
iTerm2Terminal.appVS CodeZedCursortmuxWarp
Not another SSH client

The terminal you're in.
Not a new one.

Every other remote-terminal tool opens a fresh session somewhere. TermBridge hooks the shell layer itself — so it mirrors the exact terminals already running on your desk.

Only TermBridge

Attach to the shell you're already in

A tiny shell-layer hook wraps every interactive shell in an agent-owned PTY. So the terminal already running on your desk is the one that shows up on your phone — not a fresh login session.

Other apps spawn their own sessions via forkpty() — they can only see terminals you started inside them.
Only TermBridge

See your VS Code, Zed & Cursor terminals

Because the hook sits at the shell layer, integrated editor terminals show up too. Watch a build running inside Cursor from the train — no copy-paste, no second session.

SSH clients and session-spawning apps can't reach an editor's embedded terminal at all.
Only TermBridge

Truly multi-device

Pair your iPhone and iPad to the same Mac at once — each device gets its own derived key, no eviction. Pick up a session on whichever screen is in your hand.

Most apps cap you at one active device and boot the other on connect.
The essentials

A real terminal — that fits in a hand.

Nothing simplified, nothing faked. The same shell, rendered for your phone.

Every live shell, one tap

A live-updating list of every open terminal across all your terminal apps. New shells appear without a refresh — tap to attach instantly.

All your Macs

Pair several Macs and switch between them in a tap. Each machine gets its own stable, isolated relay room — they never collide.

Real terminals, full color

Raw VT bytes pass through untouched: 256-color, vim, tmux, htop, progress bars — all render exactly as they do on your desk.

Nothing is lost

A 256 KiB scrollback ring buffer per shell replays everything you missed the moment you re-attach. Detach and the shell keeps running.

Built for thumbs

A modifier-key tray puts Tab, Esc, Ctrl-C and arrows one tap away. An extended bar appears on iPad.

Survives the subway

Exponential-backoff reconnect on both ends, plus an instant reconnect the moment your network flips from cellular to Wi-Fi or the app returns to the foreground.

Security by construction

The relay never sees a thing.

Encryption isn't a setting you turn on — it's the only way TermBridge can work. Keys are derived directly between your devices and never transit the relay.

End-to-end encrypted

X25519 key exchange + AES-256-GCM per frame. The relay only ever sees ciphertext.

Forward secrecy

A fresh ephemeral key per connection — your static secret never encrypts a single byte of data.

Channel binding

An HMAC over both ephemeral keys blocks a malicious relay from sitting in the middle. Forge it and the handshake aborts.

Keys never leave your devices

Pairing derives the secret directly between phone and Mac. No accounts, no key server, nothing to breach.

Your phone
holds a key
Relay
ciphertext only
Your Mac
holds a key
🔒 Zero-knowledge — the relay pipes sealed frames and never holds a key.
Set up in under a minute

Three steps. No config files.

Install the menu-bar app

Drag TermBridge.app to Applications and launch it once. It installs a tiny background agent and lives in your menu bar.

~4 MB · macOS 13+

Scan the pairing QR

The menu-bar popover shows a QR. Open TermBridge on your phone and scan it — approve the fingerprint on your Mac and you're bonded.

One-time · no accounts

Attach from anywhere

Your live shells appear on your phone. Tap one and you're in — at home, on cellular, across the planet. No port-forwarding, ever.

Works on any network
How it compares

Where other tools stop short.

Set against the remote-terminal landscape — session-spawning apps, SSH clients, and on-device shells.

TermBridge TermOnMacSSH clients
Blink · Termius · Prompt
Termux
Android-only
Attach to terminals you're already in
See VS Code / Zed / Cursor terminals
No SSH keys or port-forwarding
No open ports / public IP on your Mac
End-to-end encrypted relay partial
Pair multiple devices at once partial
Switch between several Macs partial
Controls your real Mac, from anywhere

Comparison reflects publicly documented capabilities as of May 2026. Product names belong to their respective owners.

Pricing

Free to run your Mac today.

v1 ships free. Pro & Lifetime arrive when in-app purchases land — the core attach is never paywalled.

Free
$0 forever
 

The magic, free. We'll never paywall the core attach.

  • 1 Mac · 1 active session
  • Attach to any live shell
  • Full terminal — color, vim, tmux
  • End-to-end encryption
  • Scrollback replay & auto-reconnect
Download free
Coming soon Pro
$17.99 / year
Save 50% — 6 months free

For developers living across machines, screens, and agents.

  • Everything in Free
  • Unlimited Macs & sessions
  • iPhone + iPad paired at once
  • Watch AI agents — Claude Code · Codex
  • iPad 3-panel split view
  • Saved one-tap shortkeys
Notify me
Coming soon Lifetime
$29.99 once
 

All of Pro, forever. For devs who'd rather not subscribe.

  • Everything in Pro
  • One payment — yours for good
  • All future Pro features
  • No subscription, ever
Notify me

$17.99/yr — about 6× cheaper than Termius's $120/yr, with a one-time Lifetime option for the anti-subscription crowd.

Questions

Good questions, answered.

Is this just an SSH client?+
No. SSH clients open a brand-new login shell on a fixed address. TermBridge hooks the shell layer so it mirrors the terminals you're already in — including the ones embedded in VS Code, Zed and Cursor — and never needs an open port, a public IP, or a port-forward.
How does it reach my Mac without opening a port?+
Your Mac holds a single outbound encrypted connection to a relay. Your phone connects to the same relay and the two are paired into a private room. There is no inbound port on your Mac, so nothing new is exposed to the internet.
Can the relay read my terminal?+
No. Everything is end-to-end encrypted with X25519 + AES-256-GCM and a fresh ephemeral key per session. The relay routes sealed frames only — it never holds a key and never sees plaintext.
What does it touch on my Mac?+
A guarded snippet re-execs your interactive shell through an agent-owned PTY. It always fails safe — a missing binary or bad state can never lock you out of a terminal — and you can remove it any time with the bundled uninstaller.
Which terminals work?+
All of them. Because the hook is at the shell layer, iTerm2, Terminal.app, the VS Code / Zed / Cursor integrated terminals, and tmux sessions all show up the same way.
Is it on the App Store yet?+
The iOS app is in TestFlight beta now and the Mac app ships as a direct .dmg download. A public App Store release is on the way — join the beta to get in early.

Leave your Mac on.
Take its terminal with you.

Install the agent, scan once, and your shells are in your pocket — wherever you go.