Terminal

The Mobile SSH terminal is built for phone and tablet operation. It combines a terminal canvas, an extra key row, multi-session panes, scroll handling, and reconnection behavior.

Terminal basics

The terminal uses xterm-style behavior with color support and cursor-key handling.
The scrollback buffer keeps up to 5000 lines.
Tap a pane to select it before typing.
Pinch a terminal pane to change text size. Mobile SSH resizes the remote PTY after the gesture settles.
Double-tap a pane to enter fullscreen mode. Use Back to return to the grid.

Multi-session grid

Mobile SSH can run up to eight SSH sessions at the same time. Each session appears as a pane in the terminal grid. The pane header shows the current target or title. Tap a pane to select it, or use + Add Session to start another connection.

Closing a pane disconnects that SSH session. Returning to the start screen keeps live sessions available through Active Sessions.

Eternal Terminal (ET)

Each saved server can use one of two transports, chosen with the Transport selector when you add or edit a server:

SSH — a standard SSH connection (the default).
Eternal Terminal — an ET session that survives network drops, device sleep, and IP address changes without restarting your shell.

ET keeps the session alive on the server, so when your phone changes networks or wakes from sleep, Mobile SSH reattaches to the same running shell instead of opening a new one. This makes it a good fit for mobile data, Wi-Fi/cellular hand-offs, and long-running commands.

ET needs an etserver process on the host. If the server does not have one, Mobile SSH can install and start it for you over the existing SSH connection — no manual server setup required. Once ET is available, connect with the Eternal Terminal transport selected.

Extra key row

The extra key row appears above the Android keyboard and provides terminal keys that are awkward on touch keyboards:

ESC
TAB
CTRL
Shift
Arrow keys
HOME
END
PGUP
PGDN
Keyboard toggle

CTRL and Shift act as sticky modifiers for the next compatible input. For example, tap CTRL, then type C to send Ctrl-C.

Keyboard behavior

Mobile SSH has two keyboard-related settings:

Tap terminal to show keyboard: when enabled, tapping the terminal asks Android to show the input method.
Keyboard suggestions: when enabled, compatible keyboards can show suggestions at shell prompts. Disable this if suggestions interfere with terminal programs.

When suggestions are enabled, Mobile SSH buffers composing text until a word boundary so keyboard correction can replace the current word before it is sent to the remote shell. Control keys and terminal chords bypass that buffer so shortcuts such as tmux prefix commands still arrive promptly.

Voice input (the Gboard microphone button) is routed through the same composing-text buffer, so dictated text is sent once it resolves rather than character by character.

Long-press inside the terminal to enter selection mode. The selection toolbar offers three actions:

Copy — place the selected text on the Android clipboard.
Share — pass the selected text to the Android share sheet (mail, notes, messaging, etc.).
Select all — expand the selection to the full visible terminal buffer, then Copy or Share.

Scrolling

Mobile SSH routes scroll gestures based on terminal state:

In normal shell output, swiping scrolls the local scrollback buffer.
In mouse-mode terminal apps, scrolling sends mouse-wheel escape sequences.
In alternate-screen apps without mouse mode, such as many tmux sessions, scrolling enters tmux copy mode and sends line scroll commands.

If you type while scrolled back, Mobile SSH returns to the live terminal view.

tmux behavior

Mobile SSH observes outgoing tmux attach and new-session commands such as:

tmux attach -t work
tmux a -t work
tmux new -A -s work

When a connection drops while you were in tmux, the app can remember the last tmux session name for that server and attempt to reattach after reconnect. If no explicit session name was observed but the app knows you were in an alternate-screen tmux-like session, it may try a generic tmux attach.

This behavior is best-effort. If the remote tmux session no longer exists, the remote shell remains available.

Tmux manager

Mobile SSH includes a tmux manager so you can browse and control tmux without typing prefix chords. Open it with the Tmux button from a connected session. It lists, in three sections:

Sessions — every tmux session on the server.
Windows — windows in the selected session.
Panes — panes in the selected window.

From the manager you can:

Attach a session to the current terminal.
Create a new session or window, and rename them.
Split a pane horizontally or vertically, zoom a pane, and kill sessions, windows, or panes.
Sort sessions by name or creation date.

A 🔔 marks any session whose agent is awaiting input, so you can spot a paused Claude Code or Codex run at a glance and attach to it. This complements the reattach hints above: the reattach logic restores your last session automatically on reconnect, while the manager gives you full manual control.

Agent alerts

Mobile SSH can watch the terminal output of the active session for patterns that indicate a remote agent is waiting for input. When a match is detected — for example, Claude Code or Codex pausing for a prompt — the app sends a notification with optional sound and vibration.

To configure:

Open Settings from the start screen.
Enable Agent alerts.
Choose a notification sound and vibration pattern.

The alert plays through whichever audio output is active, including headphones, so you can hear it while watching a video or with the phone locked. The notification appears even when Mobile SSH is in the background.

Agent alert patterns are matched against visible terminal output. If your remote tool outputs a recognizable prompt line (a username, a ?, a bracketed question), the app may pick it up automatically. If alerts fire too often or not at all, adjust the sensitivity in Settings.

Full-screen terminal programs

For programs such as Vim, less, htop, ncurses tools, and tmux panes:

Disable keyboard suggestions if the keyboard starts buffering input in a way the program does not expect.
Use the extra key row for ESC, arrows, PGUP, and PGDN.
Use pinch zoom if text is too small, then wait briefly for the remote terminal size to settle.