Native iPad terminal for tmux
Agent Term connects over SSH to tmux on your Mac or Linux machine and shows its windows as tabs and its panes as native splits, with every action on the Magic Keyboard. You get the actual shell - Claude Code, Codex, vim, htop, whatever runs there - not a chat window that relays messages to an agent.
Agent Term is in TestFlight testing today. No account, no analytics, no server of ours in between - see the privacy policy.
Most iPad SSH clients draw tmux as one more program inside a text screen. Agent Term talks to tmux itself, through tmux control mode, and builds the iPad interface from what tmux reports. Items marked today work in the current TestFlight build; coming soon is designed and not built yet.
Each tmux session is a tab, its windows sit in a strip under it, and its panes are real iPad split views - not characters drawn by tmux. Split, zoom, rename and close from the keyboard; the change happens in tmux, so the same session on your Mac's terminal sees it too.
Closing a tab, losing Wi-Fi or backgrounding the app only detaches. Your sessions keep running on the host.
Sessions grouped by git repository, each project with its own tabs and layout. Two to four different sessions on screen at once - an agent, its tests and a shell side by side - and a live overview of every session in a project.
Every app action has a ⌘ shortcut, and nothing the app uses contains Control: ⌃ always goes to the program on the host. Shortcuts work with US, German and Russian layouts, Option works as Meta, and ⌘. sends Esc on keyboards without an Escape key.
Claude Code and Codex hooks on your host mark a session as working, waiting for input or finished. The app shows it on tabs and projects, and one shortcut jumps to the session that has waited longest.
Run agent-term-pair on your Mac and scan the code. The iPad's key is added, checked with one real SSH login against the host key from the QR, and only then made permanent. No typing of addresses, users or keys.
iPadOS ends background apps. Agent Term saves tabs, the active tmux window and focused pane as they change, and on the next launch reconnects and shows each pane's current screen - including output produced while the app was closed.
These are in the current build. Hold ⌘ on the iPad to see them in the system menu.
| Keys | Action |
|---|---|
| ⌘T | Open a session from any tmux server on the host |
| ⌘K | Quick switcher |
| ⌘1 … ⌘9 | Tab 1-8, last tab |
| ⌃⇥ ⌃⇧⇥ | Next, previous tab |
| ⌘W | Detach tab (the session keeps running) |
| ⇧⌘T | Reopen closed tab |
| ⇧⌘R | Rename session |
| ⌘F | Find in scrollback |
| Keys | Action |
|---|---|
| ⌘D ⇧⌘D | Split pane right, down |
| ⌥⌘ + arrows | Move focus to the next pane |
| ⇧⌘↩ | Zoom pane |
| ⌥⌘T | New tmux window |
| ⌥⌘W | Close pane (asks first) |
| ⌘. | Esc |
| ⌘← ⌘→ ⌘⌫ | Start, end of line, delete line |
| ⌘+ ⌘- ⌘0 | Font size |
Today Agent Term uses the SSH server built into macOS and tmux. Nothing of ours runs on the Mac except a small pairing helper that exits when pairing is done.
System Settings, General, Sharing, Remote Login. This is the SSH server that ships with macOS.
tmux 3.2 or newer, for example brew install tmux. Run your shells and agents inside tmux sessions.
The helper prints a QR code. Scan it with the iPad camera or inside the app and tap Pair.
Agent Term finds every tmux server of your user and lists its sessions. Open one, or start a new one.
Agent Term~/.ssh/authorized_keys.The download is free and includes the complete terminal for one host. Pro is a one-time in-app purchase of $9.99. There is no subscription.
$0
Everything you need for one Mac or server.
$9.99 one-time
For several machines and many sessions at once.
Prices in US dollars; the App Store shows the local price in other countries. Pro is purchased and handled by Apple. Features marked coming soon become part of Pro when they ship. Plain-text version: pricing.md.
Termius and Blink are general SSH clients: tmux runs inside them as one more program, drawn as text, and you drive it with its prefix key. Secure ShellFish adds a tmux session picker, and Moshi focuses on coding agents with notifications and voice. Agent Term is built on tmux control mode: tmux sessions, windows and panes become native iPad tabs and split views, keyboard shortcuts are designed for the Magic Keyboard on any layout, and projects and agent status are built on top of the same tmux data. The comparison is based on the other apps' public App Store descriptions.
Those are agent chats: you see and answer one agent conversation, relayed through the vendor's service. Agent Term is a terminal. You get the shell on your own machine with everything that runs there - several agents, tests, logs, editors, git - and the agents keep running in tmux whether the iPad is connected or not. Agent Term works with Claude Code and Codex as compatible tools; it is not made by or affiliated with Anthropic or OpenAI.
The app is a free download with the full terminal, tmux tabs and panes, keyboard shortcuts, QR pairing and one host. Agent Term Pro is a one-time in-app purchase of $9.99 for several hosts, projects with the session grid and overview, starting agents from the app, notifications and themes. There is no subscription.
The SSH key is generated on the iPad and stored in its Keychain; the private key never leaves the device. Terminal traffic goes directly between the iPad and your host over SSH, with the host key pinned at pairing. There is no account and no server of ours in between, so we never see your sessions, commands or files. The app has no analytics.
No. Agent Term is a terminal for anything that runs in tmux: shells, editors, build tools, servers. Agent-specific features - knowing which agent waits for input, starting an agent from the app - are coming for Claude Code and Codex.
Yes, with Tailscale on the Mac and the iPad. Agent Term connects to the host's Tailscale address like to any other SSH host. No port has to be opened to the internet, and no relay of ours is involved.
Yes. App shortcuts sit on letters, digits and arrows, which arrive the same way from US, German and Russian layouts; Control and Option combinations go to the terminal. This is covered by automated UI tests on each layout.
Nothing is lost. The tmux sessions run on your host the whole time. When you open Agent Term again it restores your tabs, reconnects and shows each pane's current screen, including what was printed while the app was closed.
Agent Term is in TestFlight testing now. The App Store release is coming; there is no date yet.