Show HN: Echo, an iOS SSH+mosh client built on Ghostty | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Echo, an iOS SSH+mosh client built on Ghostty

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122 pointssgottit75 comments

I generally use iSH[1] for my iPhone to Linux needs. Specifically, I like it because it's a standard Linux distribution with OpenSSH. Meaning all the things work like sftp, ssh, tunnels, and local clients like `mysql` tunneled through ssh

[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ish-shell/id1436902243

I use iSH too and love that I have all my standard CLI tools available, or can just install ones I want.

But using the ssh client in iSH to interact with TUI interfaces is a less than optimal experience. Many nice UI affordances that something like Terminus provides are lacking. Like using swipes as input, key management tools, or using location monitoring as a trick to keep it running in the background. Definitely excited to check out this new Echo client.

I also love iSH. However, I haven't been able to run agents directly from my phone on it like I would hope.

I spent a few hours trying to get GitHub Copilot CLI or Claude Code installed only to discover that the version of Node is pegged to 14, which prohibits installation of several of these tools via NPM.

Has anyone had success with this? I'd love to see the packages updated to support later versions

This is pretty awesome, and at a $3 price point is an auto purchase for me!

As someone else said though, hardware keyboard support on iOS is something that I would really want as I regularly use ShellFish on my iPhone with a USB-C keyboard.

Something that actually matters more to me is font support. I use nerd fonts for my zsh prompt, so an app that doesn't support them is a hard sell. Are custom fonts supported, or at least on the roadmap?

Additionally I just want clarification on your business model. Once I pay now I will get all future updates for free or might I have to pay for them?

EDIT: (Since Ghostty supports it) Does this also support showing images in the terminal via the kitty protocol?

Neat, it's staggering that there hasn't been a good non-subscription option for a simple utility like this for iOS. I've used Termius for a while, but it pushes a subscription and AI features pretty hard.

I think this really needs the ability to generate SSH keys on the secure enclave, like Secretive[1] does on macOS.

[1] https://secretive.dev/

Thanks! Agree - Secure Enclave support with key generation has been a common feature request. Definitely on the roadmap.

Please add fido auth for ssh. My pipe dream is this + nixpkgs distribution for wasm or something.

There used to be a couple non-subscription ones. I’m still using Prompt 2, but of course it’s been superseded by the subscription-bound Prompt 3 on the App Store for some time now.

+1 in the same boat here. Only subscription I'm paying now is Signal backups, I simply can't justify the one-time price of 100$ they charge for Prompt 3

Yes, something like $20 would be reasonable, but at $100 I’ll stick with the limitations of the old version.

I’m happy with ShellFish, $30 one-time (subscription option too). https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ssh-client-secure-shellfish/id...

Interesting project!

Two problems for me:

- I want my iPhone terminal to be built for use w/ external keyboard.

- While I really like pay-once a use-often app like a terminal you really want to try before you buy. But maybe Apples general refund-if-not-satisfied is still a thing and enough?

Echo works great with an external keyboard fwiw. My daily driver is using it with the iPad and keyboard

It says "full hardware keyboard support" in the blog post, but its not a headline so its easy to miss.

In the App Store it says it requires iOS 26.2 or later. Any reason it couldn't be made to run on iOS 18? I only ask because I don't wanna upgrade to Liquid Glass!

Purchased. Love the app.

A few requests:

- In Secure Shellfish, I love that if iOS suspends it and I reopen it, it just does `tmux attach` on the last host automatically. Echo has the "startup command", but seems I still have to manually click on the last host I used to resume. Perhaps we can get an option to auto-reconnect to the last host? (My work firewall blocks Mosh so I need to do the ssh-and-attach dance when iOS kills the app.)

- When using Emacs on iOS, it would be great to be able to save keychords like `C-x C-s` or `M-x` somewhere, for example on the virtual keyboard top row. (I would be ecstatic if I could use the volume buttons as Ctrl and Meta, but I guess that’s more complicated to do.)

thanks that's great feedback. currently thinking and working right now on the best way to handle customisability of the keyboard (without making it a chore to configure or a horrendous ui). hadn't considered "chords" yet but it's one we'll consider as we approach this

Cool! Looking forward to see how this evolves going forward :)

I'd love the ability to run a command on connection to a server (like "tmux attach -t main") and also a way to create my own buttons in the UI to send things like tmux commands (next window, create window, etc) to make it easier use from my phone.

Also, and I'll probably just buy it to test, but how does it handle copy/paste and STT? Especially with coding agents I use speech-to-text to explain something and that's always hit or miss in terminal apps on iOS in my experience.

It looks like you set a startup command in the "Advanced Configuration" menu for the host

Nice, thanks for letting me know!

For STT I use the WisprFlow app/keyboard. It is much more accurate than the built in functionality in iOS, in my experience.

Oh, very interesting, I wasn't even aware this was a thing. I mean, I guess it's obvious but after trying third-party keyboards years ago (and finding them too buggy) I never really kept up with them. I'll check that out!

I bought it when it came out and enjoy using it. I have a STT keyboard powered by Parakeet that has a minimized mode ideal for phone terminals

https://x.com/usetalkieapp/status/2024342996322283734/photo/...

Very cool! I've been using Termius for a while. Overall positive, but my one complaint is that the interactions can be pretty tedious using it with TUIs like Claude Code. I like the gesture-based movement, excited to try that in practice.

I use Tailscale SSH, so one very small bit of feedback is that it took me a second to realize I just needed to put a dummy password in to actually get to the connection.

How do I add other keys to the little virtual keyboard? Inability to easily type ` is pretty tough. Looks beautiful though.

Thanks! We're working on an update to the keyboard toolbar right now to support a customisable set of keys

Combos too please, like shift-tab for Claude Code.

Amazing-looking UX. My biggest feature suggestion: implement support for SSH jump hosts. I suspect having a single SSH gateway in your homelab that you configure all other hosts with ProxyJump in .ssh/config is a super-common setup amongst your target audience.

How does it compare to the (extremely expensive) Prompt 3 app? I'm still stuck with Prompt 2 which I now don't even see on the App store anymore. Been waiting for a decent non-subscription based alternative

I will give it a spin on my Apple Vision Pro. Have been trying ttyd, which could really be great as is it browser based and hence I can have as many windows as I want, but a safari bug on iOS/ipados/visionos is a showstopper: specifically, safari sends keycode 13 events (enter key) when pressing ctrl-c on a hardware keyboard. So emacs, interrupting fg processes etc are problematic.

I’ll submit a pr to xterm.js for a workaround.

Nice. Hopefully it will evolve into something as good as termux on android. It won't ever be as good, because ios is a toy with rubber on all corners.

Love that they copied the bar above the keyboard. Even with android custom keyboard that was a great feature, on IOS that's essential.

oh, it's closed source. and lazygit (the least terminal based of all cli tools) being their inapiration doesn't inspire much confidence in long term :(

I’ve been using blink on ios for years it’s opensource and works pretty well for me.

I actually kinda like working on my ipad this way (ssh’d into dev box) it’s not really distracting somehow and not having full jetbrains etc makes for a different kinda session.

shrug

Very nice! But, looking at the keyboard, there is a bunch of wasted space above the top row of keys that I just don’t understand how Apple put there. When you’re working with tiny text in a terminal every little bit of space matters and on tiny phone screens it’s crazy they would do something so strange. Does anyone know if it’s possible to remove that top bit of wasted space from the keyboard on iOS 26?

I'll spend the $3 to try it out.

Any real different than Terminus? That seemed to be the latest and greatest last I was shopping for an iOS SSH client.

Also, maybe just because its new (I dont realy know how App Store search works) but searching "Echo" and "Echo SSH" returned way too many Amazon/Alexa related apps, and then many other terminals before yours.

Terminus was a sledgehammer for the small, neat little app I wanted to build (though I'm sure it's great). Plus a big driver was the ability to use Ghostty's engine. I'm not familiar with what Terminus use under the hood.

Not saying there aren't things the dev could do to improve that situation, but I experienced the same thing and was confused before I scrolled back up to see that the app store "helpfully" displayed: "showing results for echo show, search for echo ssh instead?"

Oh...yeah, might have been user error. I assumed it's just too closely-named and too new to show up. Either way, probably little they could do

Does it have the same issue with key repeat? It's a long standing iOS bug, but some apps seem to fix it (somehow). Without the fix, vim ends up being essentially unusable since I can't press and hold on the cursor movement keys. iSH, for example, hits the bug and it severely limits the usefulness of the app.

Last time I checked system-level key repeat is only for arrows, space, enter, — not letters.

Some apps just implement it manually, but yeah.

Don’t fool yourself into using iPad as your work machine. Buy a macbook.

As someone interested in mobile workflows, say more?

Where are you running into barriers on iPad for your work? (I believe it, plenty of examples - curious what yours is!)

Does it allow truly persistent mosh connections? I can't remember which iOS client it was, but I've used one which forgot I was connected if I left the app for long enough. The mosh process was still running on the server, but my iPad had forgotten how to talk to it.

No. Just tried it and it doesn't.

The requirements for this seem strange. What is it about iOS 26.2 that makes it a minimum requirement?

Feature request: The ability to sync my saved connections to iCloud, so I can keep them in sync across all my different devices. Just the connection and nickname really. Don’t want password or keys to be synced.

I can't figure out how to use this, I can't scroll up/down?

Such a shame that it only works on iOS 26. I was willing to buy it. Is there any technical reason not to target older devices?

I totally recommend Termius as a more mature alternative tho. It may not be as interesting as using Ghostty, but works on an older OS.

Finally an ios terminal app without the feature creep. Nice and functional. Well done, team.

Unfortunately, I can't connect to my NixOS machines as their sshd is hardened to only support ETM MAC by default, which Echo doesn't support (as per their troubleshooting doc). Any idea when other MACs would be supported?

Does this work with a Yubikey?

Really nice! I really enjoy it. The only thing I notice is when I'm using Claude code via SSH, the app hangs itself up once the conversation gets longer.

Termius, for example, doesn't have the problem.

Would be great to see some more ssh key features from Termius implemented: generating new keys, including keys that are stored in the Secure Enclave, exporting keys to hosts directly via the app

Looks nice. Does anyone know if there is something similar for Android?

Termux is the OG.

Most iOS SSH clients feel like afterthoughts with janky keyboard handling. Curious how you're dealing with the input layer, that's always been the hardest part to get right on iOS

Nice job! Purchased. Would love to be able to make the font much smaller. It says "10pt font" but it is still larger than I need and would love the extra real estate.

You can pinch to zoom in and out beyond the defaults and get a lot of real estate that way. Thanks for the kind words!

thanks - follow up, it logs out every time my phone screen locks - is there any way to make it not log out?

The description says it supports SSH certificate authentication, but I can’t see where to configure trusted CAs.

Hm I feel gypped with the mosh aspect. I was expecting to be able to mosh into a server, context switch, and resume the same session later. It doesn't resume, it just requires you establish a new session. Meh.

This is not explained at all on their website.

It looks really nice and clean. It's an SSH app though, right, so I would need a server to remote into?

Something running an SSH server service, yes.

A decade plus ago, you could ssh into localhost on iOS, but that got nipped in the bud with sandboxing.

Some brutal reviews on the iOS app store suggesting RSA keys do not work?

Well, the app description does say "modern". No modern app should be using rsa keys. ssh-rsa was deprecated in OpenSSH in 2020 https://www.openssh.org/txt/release-8.2

Yet it supports password based auth which is less secure.

Agent forwarding support would be nice.

Is there a way to connect to non-standard SSH port that i’m missing?

At a minimum, I'd expect a networking program named "echo" to be able to talk to port 7...

figured it out. in the connection box just append :port-number to the hostname/ip address, e.g. user@server:7 to have it try port 7. you should see it reflected in the connection detail text below the box

I definitely love the UI. Also amazing Job you did

This is really, really nice. Thanks for sharing!

Any chance you'd consider an android port?

Amazing! Insta-buy for me.

finally I can move off termius, this looks great!

This sounds nice, but since you're talking about using it with agents, to what extent was AI used to actually write the app?

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