rootshell: Local Terminal, SSH
VPN over SSH and tssh
Free
rootshell is a desktop-class terminal emulator built on libghostty — the GPU-accelerated engine behind the Ghostty desktop terminal. A local shell on every platform, Mac screen sharing, native SSH, mosh-compatible roaming, tssh, system-wide VPN, native git, and Metal rendering in a single app.
NEW: SCREEN SHARING
Reach your Mac's screen, not just its shell, from your iPhone or iPad. High Performance mode streams up to 4K at 60 FPS, fully encrypted. Match Client sizing spins up a virtual display sized exactly to your device: no panning, no letterboxing, with remote system audio. Standard VNC mode covers Linux and headless machines, and tunnels over SSH jump hosts. Nothing to install on the Mac — turn on Screen Sharing and connect. Touch, trackpad, hardware keyboard, and two-way clipboard all work, in tabs, splits, or full screen.
METAL-ACCELERATED TERMINAL
Built on libghostty's Zig core with direct Metal rendering. Smooth scrolling, zero-flicker synchronized output, and full mouse capture for tmux, vim, and zellij. Tabs, split panes, and persistent scrollback across app restarts.
THREE REMOTE PROTOCOLS, ONE APP
• SSH — Native Swift SSH client with Ed25519, ECDSA, RSA, and post-quantum ML-KEM + ML-DSA. Jump hosts, port and agent forwarding, and Keychain password storage.
• Rootshell Roam — Mosh-compatible sessions survive network changes and app restarts. Multipath TCP bonds WiFi and cellular. Predictive local echo keeps typing responsive. STUN-based NAT traversal punches through firewalls.
• tssh with QUIC (TLS 1.3) and KCP transport for lower latency, full native scrollback, and session resumption.
NATIVE TMUX INTEGRATION
Attach in control mode (tmux -CC) and tmux windows become native tabs, panes become real splits — copy, search, and scroll with native gestures. A dashboard shows live window previews, and tabs survive restarts over tssh.
SSH VPN
Turn any SSH or tssh session into a system-wide VPN. Route all device traffic through your remote server. No extra software on the server — if you can SSH to it, you can VPN through it.
NATIVE GIT
Clone, commit, diff, log, blame, rebase, cherry-pick, and worktree — in native Swift with SSH transport. Syntax-highlighted pager output and optional AI-generated commit messages.
VOICE AI AGENT
Talk to an always-on assistant over Gemini Live. It reads scrollback, runs SSH commands hands-free, searches the web, and asks permission before anything risky.
OPTIONAL TEXT AI
Chat with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or 400+ models via OpenRouter. Bring your own API key.
HARDWARE SECURITY KEYS
Private keys never leave hardware. FIDO2/WebAuthn authentication with touch-to-sign.
SANDBOXED LOCAL SHELL
A full local shell with vim 9.1, Helix, SFTP, SCP, curl, jq, mtr, and standard Unix utilities. The rf browser offers yazi-style miller columns with image previews and git indicators. croc peer-to-peer file transfer, flag-aware tab completion, and prompt themes.
CLOUD & KUBERNETES
Connect to AWS, Azure, DigitalOcean, Akamai (Linode), and Tailscale. Browse instances, access serial consoles, generate EKS kubeconfigs, and debug Kubernetes nodes with ephemeral pods.
450+ THEMES & VISUAL EFFECTS
Over 450 color themes with location-based day/night switching. Animated backgrounds — solar, ocean waves, starfields, fireflies — plus Shadertoy-compatible shaders and custom fonts.
CUSTOMIZABLE TOOLBAR
Drag, reorder, and hide 45+ built-in keys. Create custom keys that send text, key combos, or sequences. Sticky modifiers with tap and double-tap lock. Separate iPhone and iPad layouts.
CONNECTION MANAGEMENT
Save profiles with folders, tags, and iCloud sync. Quick Connect autocompletes from history and cloud instances. Background SSH tunnels with auto-start. Siri Shortcuts integration.
KEYBOARD POWER FEATURES
QMK-style mod-tap keys, dictation and CJK input, customizable shortcuts, and Option key as Alt for international layouts.
Ratings & Reviews
- This app has not received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
Detached Keyboard & iPhone Duo
- Float the built-in Terminal Keyboard over the terminal on iPhone. Long-press the keyboard switch key and choose Detached; drag the ellipsis handle to move it.
- Placement and position are remembered after relaunch. On iPad, the menu is available with Use System Detached Keyboard off.
- On iOS 27.1 and later, the docked terminal keyboard splits around iPhone Duo's fold, with a space bar on each side. Toolbar buttons and swipe pages also avoid the fold. The floating keyboard settles clear of it where space allows.
- Fixed iPad system detached keyboard dragging, resizing and drawer clipping, plus full-width keyboard flashes when focusing terminals or switching tabs. Improved keyboard focus during Duo folds and herdr tab restoration.
Remote Ports
- Discover listening TCP ports on remote hosts with Show Remote Ports in Settings > Appearance > Window. Tap the globe at the terminal's bottom-right, then choose a port to forward it and open its page in a rootshell tab.
- Edit the address to change paths or use HTTP/HTTPS, including self-signed development servers on that forward. Port menus offer Copy Local URL and Stop Forward.
- Supports SSH, tssh and the retained SSH connection for Mosh/Roam, including tmux and herdr control-mode panes. Restored Mosh/Roam sessions need a fresh SSH bootstrap after relaunch.
- Off by default. Scans run for visible terminals while the app is in the foreground. Tunnels bind only to this device and end with the connection.
Screen Sharing
- Connect to wayshare servers on Linux, including Hyprland desktops, using Apple SRP in Standard or High Performance mode. New Remote System choices recognize wayshare automatically or let you select Linux to send Option as Alt.
- Fixed Standard mode waiting indefinitely for the first image on Macs with multiple displays, cropped displays and misplaced clicks, and VeNCrypt TLS handshake failures with servers such as WayVNC.
Agent Push Notifications
- Added Pi, Oh My Pi and Hermes integrations for completed turns, failures and supported requests for input. Notification titles include the sending hostname.
- Fixed lost notifications from one-shot Codex commands and improved Pi/Oh My Pi completion delivery.
- Update rootshell-notify on each sending computer with Install or Upgrade the Hook Client in Push Notification settings, then restart agents or reload extensions. For Hermes, also run hermes plugins enable rootshell-push.
Custom Keys & Sessions
- New Symbols tab in the key-combination picker for custom toolbar keys and swipe gestures. Fixed Shift/Ctrl combinations with digits and punctuation, modifiers on Page Up/Down, and lost Shift in custom combinations under Neovim's kitty keyboard protocol.
- Fixed tssh dropping terminal pixel-size replies, restoring graphics sizing in remote apps such as terminal-browser, including tssh launched from the local shell.
- Fixed tmux focus jumping back after rapid pane changes. Switching zmx sessions in Exposé now moves only the selected pane, keeps attach commands out of shell history and restores the chosen session after reconnecting or relaunching.
Local Tools & Reliability
- Updated Vim to 9.2.1225 with security fixes and restored missing runtime files for syntax support and Python indentation.
- Updated tssh/VPN certificate validation and curl's certificate bundle to reject compromised eMudhra CA keys.
- Fixed launch hangs and crashes while restoring bookmarked folders, and local-shell crashes when the working folder was deleted or inaccessible.
- Fixed iPad tab-menu freezes, Command+T opening an unfocused shell behind Connections, Escape failing to dismiss Connections, and launch commands not executing in remote Windows consoles.
- Floating File Manager, HTTP Capture and Find panels can move over the pinned tab sidebar. Fixed theme matching after closing a window. Notifications now reveal panes hidden by a zoomed or full-screen sibling.
The developer, Rootshell LLC, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Size
- 394.5 MB
- Category
- Developer Tools
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 18.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 18.0 or later. - iPad
Requires iPadOS 18.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Location
- This app may use your location even when it is not open, which can decrease device battery life.
- Languages
English and 24 more
- English, Arabic, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Simplified Chinese, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Traditional Chinese, Ukrainian, Vietnamese
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- Provider
Rootshell LLC
- Rootshell LLC has identified itself as a trader for this app and confirmed that this product or service complies with European Union law.
- DUNS Number
144982434 - Address
9920 Pacific Heights Blvd
Ste 150
San Diego California 92121-4361
United States - Phone Number
+1 6198154421 - Email
support@rootshell.com
- Copyright
- © 2026 Rootshell LLC
