ShellCast

Website: shellcast.ccday.top

A native iOS/iPadOS terminal app for managing remote sessions from your phone. Built for the use case of operating terminal sessions (e.g. Claude Code) on your laptop while away from it — grant permissions, send commands, check output, all from your pocket.

How It Works

Connect to your machines over Tailscale's private network, browse and attach to tmux sessions, and interact through a full terminal emulator with a touch-optimized keyboard toolbar.

iPhone/iPad  →  Tailscale VPN  →  SSH  →  tmux attach  →  Full Terminal

Tech Stack

• SwiftUI / iOS 17+
• SwiftTerm — xterm-256color terminal emulator
• Citadel — pure Swift SSH (SwiftNIO-based)
• Tailscale — private network layer (separate VPN app)
• SwiftData — connection storage
• iOS Keychain — credential storage

Features

Implemented

• SSH Connections — password auth, SSH key authentication, Tailscale SSH (zero-password), saved connections with Keychain storage
• Mosh Protocol — survive network switches and long sleep without reconnecting
• Tmux Integration — list sessions, attach to existing, create new, or connect without tmux
• Full Terminal Emulator — xterm-256color via SwiftTerm with proper ANSI rendering
• Keyboard Toolbar — Ctrl, Alt, Esc, Tab, arrow keys, PgUp/PgDn, and common symbols (| / \ ~ - _) above the keyboard
• Auto-Reconnect — detects connection loss on returning from background, automatically reconnects SSH and reattaches tmux session
• Voice Input — dictate commands via WhisperKit (on-device) or Apple Speech Recognition, with multiline preview before sending
• Image Paste — paste images from iOS clipboard into Claude Code sessions with native [image1] support; configurable quality (Low/Medium/High) for data saving. Requires macOS remote with an active GUI session (user logged in)
• AI Agent Detection — plugin architecture to detect and display AI agents (Claude, OpenCode, Kimi) with brand icons
• Session Snapshots — terminal preview thumbnails on the home screen
• Settings — theme (dark/light/custom), font selection (SF Mono, Menlo, JetBrains Mono Nerd Font), font size, cursor mode/blink, scrollback buffer size
• Background Resilience — extends background execution to keep SSH alive during brief phone locks

Requirements

• iOS 17.0+
• Xcode 15+
• Tailscale iOS app (for Tailscale network access)

Building

open ShellCast/ShellCast.xcodeproj

Dependencies are managed via Swift Package Manager and resolve automatically on first build.

License

MIT