AppachiTech/portlight-ios

Your servers, from your phone.
An open-source SSH terminal for iPhone and iPad.
Watch the full demo (MP4, 48 s)
Recorded against the throwaway server in demo/server ; the agent's commands are shown by Suvadu .
Portlight is made for reaching cloud servers (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure,
DigitalOcean, or anything that speaks SSH) from your phone. It's an SSH client
only: your tools, including the aws and gcloud CLIs and coding agents like
Claude Code, run on the servers you connect to.
Portlight isn't on the App Store, and there are no plans to publish it there
for now (that may change later). You build it yourself from this repository
and install it on your own devices. Start with GETTINGSTARTED.md:
it covers everything from building to your first connection.
> Heads-up: with a free Apple ID, iOS stops a self-built app opening after
> 7 days; press Run in Xcode again to renew it. A paid developer account
> makes installs last a year.
> Status: early and actively developed. The core SSH and crypto code is
> well tested, but Portlight hasn't had an external security audit. Read
> docs/SECURITY.md for what it protects and its limits.
## Features
A real terminal. xterm-256color, via SwiftTerm.
vim, tmux, htop and friends work. Portrait and landscape (forced from the
tab bar, even with rotation lock on), A−/A+ and pinch to zoom, fit 80
columns, seven themes.
Speak to type. A strip under the terminal takes speech, in portrait or
landscape. It lands in a draft you can edit, then Insert types it without
pressing Return. Recognised on the phone; audio never leaves it.
Saved commands. git status, terraform plan and your own, one tap
away. Portlight refuses to save ones that contain a password or token.
Keys the phone lacks. A scrolling bar above the keyboard has Esc,
sticky Ctrl and Alt (tap twice to lock), Tab, arrows that auto-repeat,
shell symbols, F1–F12 and saved commands.
Tabs. Keep several sessions open. Each tab's screen survives switching
apps and locking.
Keys, not passwords. Generate Ed25519 or ECDSA keys, or a Secure
Enclave key that can never leave the phone. Import existing OpenSSH or PEM
keys, including passphrase-protected ones.
Jump hosts. Reach private instances through a bastion, like ProxyJump.
Bring your setup. Import ~/.ssh/config and knownhosts. Quick
connect from user@host:port or a pasted ssh command.
Cloud-aware details. Per-provider default usernames (ec2-user,
ubuntu, azureuser…) and the right public-key line for each provider,
including GCP's username-as-comment format.
## Screenshots
Your servers, one tap away
Keys made and kept on the phone
Speak to type, then check and send
Claude Code on your server
What the agent ran, with Suvadu
Locked every time it opens
## Security
Portlight always opens with Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode, and it
won't run on a phone without a passcode. Passwords and keys live in the
Keychain on this device only, and iOS itself withholds them until you
authenticate. Host keys are checked on every connection. Third-party
keyboards are blocked, terminal copies expire, and servers can't read your
clipboard. There are no accounts, analytics or tracking.
Details and limits are in docs/SECURITY.md. To report a