LexShell — SSH in your pocket, for iPhone & iPad

$man lexshell

Your Mac, your servers, your Raspberry Pi — a full SSH terminal, from anywhere your iPhone or iPad goes.

A real terminal

Not a toy. A proper SSH client that keeps up with vim, htop, tmux, tail -f, and whatever else you throw at it.

Finds your machines

LexShell spots the SSH hosts already on your network — your Mac, your Pi, that router you forgot about — and connects with a tap.

Every host, one tap away

Save your machines with keys or passwords, and hop back in instantly. Tabs keep multiple live connections going at once. Easily reconnect to networks you frequently access from a given location.

Keys that iOS's keyboard forgot

Esc, Tab, arrows, and real Ctrl combos sit right above the keyboard on iPhone and iPad — and that bonus row is entirely yours to build. Choose exactly which keys appear, and in what order. Need something more exotic? Fire off any Ctrl combination at any moment — ^R, ^K, ^], ^\ — no matter what's on the bar.

Delicious themes

Squid Ink, Grape Soda, Sunny-Side Up, Glowworm, Tide Pool… pick a look for every mood, or build your own.

No nonsense

No account. No analytics. No middlemen. Your connections go straight from your device to your servers — nobody in between.

LexShell Pro

$sudo lexshell --pro

Everything above is free, forever — that's the whole app, not a teaser.
But if you live in a terminal, Pro adds the power tools.

1Password integration

Keep your SSH keys where they belong — in your vault. LexShell fetches the right key on demand, at connect time, and never keeps a copy lying around.

SFTP file browser

Browse the remote filesystem without leaving LexShell. Upload, download, rename, delete, and make new folders — all with taps instead of a scp incantation.

Files app integration

Your saved servers show up as locations right inside iOS Files. Open a remote file in another app, save straight back to the box. It's just… there.

Snippets

Save the commands you type a hundred times and fire them off from the terminal key bar. One tap for that deploy script you can never quite remember.

Support an indie developer

No company, no investors, no growth team — just me, an app I use every day, and the very nice people who chip in so I keep building it.

$2 per month

Cheap. Damn cheap. Cancel whenever.

Best value $20 per year

Two months free. The good kind of freeloading.

$60 once, forever

Pay once, own it for good. For folks with subscription fatigue.

Pro is optional. The core functionality remains free, because I love you.

$ls screenshots/

Saved hosts, live connections, and a theme for every hour of the day.

LexShell home screen on iPad showing saved hosts and SSH servers discovered on the local network — Saved hosts up top — plus every SSH machine **on your network**.

LexShell terminal on iPad in the dark blue Squid Ink theme with three connection tabs open — **Squid Ink** — dark, inky, contemplative.

LexShell terminal on iPad in the purple-and-pink Grape Soda theme — **Grape Soda** — purple, moody, elegant.

LexShell terminal on iPad in the light Sunny-Side Up theme on a warm paper background — **Sunny-Side Up** — warm, sepia, oh man I am bad at writing these descriptions.

LexShell terminal on iPad in the green-on-black Glowworm theme — **Glowworm** — green phosphor, like the terminals of yore.

LexShell color scheme picker on iPad showing live previews of Squid Ink, Tide Pool, Grape Soda, Sunny-Side Up, Glowworm, and Sugar Rush themes — Pick a scheme with **live previews** — or roll your own.

LexShell home screen on iPhone showing saved hosts and SSH servers discovered on the local network — Saved hosts up top — plus every SSH machine **on your network**.

LexShell terminal on iPhone in the dark blue Squid Ink theme with three connection tabs open — **Squid Ink** — dark, inky, contemplative.

LexShell terminal on iPhone in the purple-and-pink Grape Soda theme — **Grape Soda** — purple, moody, elegant.

LexShell terminal on iPhone in the light Sunny-Side Up theme on a warm paper background — **Sunny-Side Up** — warm, sepia, oh man I am bad at writing these descriptions.

LexShell terminal on iPhone in the green-on-black Glowworm theme — **Glowworm** — green phosphor, like the terminals of yore.

LexShell color scheme picker on iPhone showing live previews of Squid Ink, Tide Pool, Grape Soda, and Sunny-Side Up themes — Pick a scheme with **live previews** — or roll your own.

$cat fine-print.txt

The whole business model:
A handful of gloriously hardcore power users pay for Pro, everybody else gets an app that's genuinely good enough for free. Somehow, this works.

[x] Free — the entire terminal, not a trial

[x] Connections go device → your server, directly

[x] Built and shared with love from me to you

[~] Pro, if you're the sort who wants SFTP and snippets

[ ] Accounts

[ ] Analytics or tracking

[ ] Ads, ever, under any circumstances

[ ] Paywalls around the stuff that was already free

[ ] Your data, going anywhere, ever

>_ ssh from anywhere. Free to start, free to stay.

Download on theApp Store