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, native SSH, mosh-compatible roaming, tssh, system-wide VPN, native git, and Metal rendering in a single app. METAL-ACCELERATED TERMINAL Built on libghostty's Zig core with direct Metal rendering via CAMetalLayer. 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 for harvest-now-decrypt-later protection. Jump hosts, port forwarding, agent forwarding with per-request approval, and Keychain password storage. • Rootshell Roam — Mosh-compatible sessions survive network changes and app restarts. Multipath TCP bonds WiFi and cellular so you never drop a link. Predictive local echo keeps typing responsive on high latency. STUN-based NAT traversal punches through firewalls. • tssh integration with QUIC (TLS 1.3) and KCP transport for lower latency, full native scrollback, and server-side session resumption. SSH VPN Turn any SSH or tssh session into a system-wide VPN. Route all device traffic through your remote server over standard SSH, QUIC, or KCP transport. No extra software on the server — if you can SSH to it, you can VPN through it. NATIVE GIT Clone, commit, diff, log, blame, branch, fetch, pull, push, cherry-pick, rebase, and worktree — all implemented in native Swift with SSH transport. Syntax-highlighted pager output, Helix integration for commit messages, and optional AI-generated commit messages from staged diffs. VOICE AI AGENT Talk to an always-on assistant over Gemini Live with sub-second latency. The agent reads scrollback, runs commands over SSH hands-free, searches the web, and asks permission before anything risky — debug a server by voice. OPTIONAL TEXT AI Chat with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or 400+ models via OpenRouter. Execute commands and analyze output. Optional — 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 SFTP, image previews, and git indicators. croc for peer-to-peer file transfer. Flag-aware tab completion, prompt themes, and line editing with arrow keys. CLOUD & KUBERNETES Connect to AWS, Azure, DigitalOcean, Akamai (Linode), and Tailscale. Browse instances, access serial consoles, and generate EKS kubeconfigs. Debug Kubernetes nodes with ephemeral pods, including immutable distributions like Talos and Flatcar. 450+ THEMES & VISUAL EFFECTS Over 450 color themes with automatic day/night switching based on your location. Animated backgrounds including solar effects with astronomically accurate moon phases, ocean waves, starfields, and fireflies. Shadertoy-compatible custom shaders. Import your own TTF/OTF fonts. CUSTOMIZABLE TOOLBAR Drag, reorder, and hide 45+ built-in keys across the main row and expandable drawer. Create custom keys that send text, key combos, or multi-step sequences — perfect for shell snippets, tmux, and vim macros. Sticky modifiers with one-shot tap and double-tap lock. Separate layouts for iPhone and iPad. CONNECTION MANAGEMENT Save connection profiles with folders, tags, and iCloud sync. Quick Connect autocompletes from history, cloud instances, and host shorthand. Background SSH tunnels with auto-start and bandwidth monitoring. Siri Shortcuts integration. KEYBOARD POWER FEATURES QMK-style mod-tap keys — one action on tap, another on hold. Dictation and CJK input methods. Customizable keyboard shortcuts. Option key as Alt for international layouts.

  • 4.8
    out of 5
    17 Ratings

Terminal - Native scrollbar now drives both tmux copy mode and zellij scroll mode, making scrollback position visible in either multiplexer. Connections - Bundled tssh client refreshed to upstream v0.1.8. Upgrade tsshd on your servers for best reliability. - SSH bootstrap retries transient failures with bounded backoff up to ~5 minutes instead of giving up on the first error. Auth failures and host-key rejections still bail immediately. iOS Local Shell - WebAssembly (WASM) Support: the local shell can now execute .wasm binaries cross-compiled to WASI (wasm32-wasip1). Provided for educational use — code you have written yourself or audited; rootshell does not offer a catalog of pre-built binaries. Get a .wasm file onto the device (scp/sftp into the local shell, or the Files app), then run it as `wasm path/to/binary.wasm args...`, or directly if the first token ends in .wasm. Capabilities: sandboxed filesystem read/write rooted at the app's Documents directory, TCP client/listener and UDP sockets via Network.framework, DNS through the system resolver, and TLS/HTTPS through standard WASI crates. Sessions run in cooked mode so Ctrl-C cancels the running binary; a binary can opt into raw mode for full-screen TUIs. Each tab gets its own runtime so two .wasm invocations stay independent. WASM programs participate in the shell like any other command, including pipes (`wasm tool.wasm | grep foo`) and redirects (`wasm tool.wasm > out.txt`). - Shell parser hardened to handle bash-only constructs: `bash -c "$(curl ...)"`, `[[ ... ]]` tests, process substitution, array assignment and append, brace-group function bodies, line continuations, and trailing redirects. Customization - Settings → Privacy & Data → Import from Ghostty Config applies fonts, theme, cursor, palette, transparency, copy-on-select, and keybindings from a desktop Ghostty config file. - New steppers in Settings → Appearance → Window for horizontal and vertical window padding. AI Agent - Added GPT-5.5: OpenAI's flagship reasoning model with a 1M token context window. BUG FIXES - Fixed a touch-handler race that affected scroll/select gesture mode for users who had never manually toggled the Scroll Mode setting. - Fixed an iPhone resume wedge where the UI advanced one frame per touch. - Fixed an iOS Local Shell hang where programs calling chdir() (Rust binaries, Vim's :cd, recursive command substitution) blocked forever. - Fixed tssh mode restore for sessions started by typing tssh, ssh, or mosh inside an open local shell tab; mouse capture, alt-screen, cursor-key mode, and bracketed paste are preserved on resume. - Fixed a stack overflow from deferred WiFi-info poll recursion during the resume quiet window. - Fixed a saved-state issue where a force-quit shortly after a successful restoration could leave a stale flag the next launch misread as failure. - Fixed a tssh ClientID race on reattach. - Fixed session recovery loss on a quick launch-then-quit cycle. - Fixed iPadOS scrollbar drag jumpiness; the finger-pan boost no longer applies to thumb or gutter drags. - Fixed an output coalescer ordering window where new writes could land ahead of older queued bytes when the coalescer was disabled. - NWPathMonitor instances now suspend while backgrounded and rearm on foreground.

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 .

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    Seller
    • Rootshell LLC
    Size
    • 325.3 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.
    Location
    • This app may use your location even when it isn’t 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+
    Copyright
    • © 2026 Rootshell LLC