--- title: "rootshell: Local Terminal, SSH - Reviews, Revenue and Downloads in United States | Apple App Store" description: "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, mo" --- # rootshell: Local Terminal, SSH — United States > VPN over SSH and tssh ![Rootshell App Icon](https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/Purple211/v4/08/1c/d1/081cd104-6bc9-4530-a511-c3c35b7b4ff1/AppIcon-0-0-1x_U007epad-0-1-0-0-sRGB-85-220.png/434x0w.png) **Developer:** [Rootshell](https://apptail.io/developer/rootshell-lxRUWb) **Category:** Developer Tools **Rating:** 4.8/5 (42 ratings) **Price:** Free **Bundle ID:** com.kk2.rootshell **Store:** Apple App Store **Country:** United States **Version:** 1.0.12 (released 2026-09-24) **Original Release:** 2026-04-19 **Languages:** English, Arabic, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hebrew (modern), Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian Bokmål, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Chinese, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese **App Store Link:** [Download on Apple App Store](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/app/id6755794662) **AppTail Page:** [https://apptail.io/app/rootshell-local-terminal-ssh-aWrz/united-states](https://apptail.io/app/rootshell-local-terminal-ssh-aWrz/united-states) ## Rootshell Description 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. ## Rootshell Screenshots - [Screenshot 1](https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/PurpleSource221/v4/08/bf/b0/08bfb0d9-e519-10cb-fa69-4d2f90651d97/Screenshot_iPhone_18_Pro_Max_09-20-2026_at_7.47.32_U202fAM.png/1320x2868.png) - [Screenshot 2](https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/PurpleSource211/v4/9b/9d/ba/9b9dba66-8e07-1d62-ee7d-68f3bbb7c6b8/Screenshot_iPhone_18_Pro_Max_09-20-2026_at_7.51.14_U202fAM.png/1320x2868.png) - [Screenshot 3](https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/PurpleSource211/v4/57/06/19/570619f0-6f94-5980-f1da-2fae99c95627/Screenshot_iPhone_18_Pro_Max_09-20-2026_at_7.52.06_U202fAM.png/1320x2868.png) - [Screenshot 4](https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/PurpleSource211/v4/86/cb/55/86cb5544-7df8-b538-5c2c-a5b8689ff620/Screenshot_iPhone_18_Pro_Max_09-20-2026_at_7.55.58_U202fAM.png/1320x2868.png) - [Screenshot 5](https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/PurpleSource221/v4/39/ac/cd/39accd3f-f72b-b252-ddf6-6d364245e8c2/Screenshot_iPhone_18_Pro_Max_09-20-2026_at_7.53.39_U202fAM.png/1320x2868.png) - [Screenshot 6](https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/PurpleSource211/v4/03/39/cf/0339cfa6-7e02-41d7-87bb-114faf0fb47e/Screenshot_iPhone_18_Pro_Max_09-20-2026_at_7.58.06_U202fAM.png/1320x2868.png) - [Screenshot 7](https://is1-ssl.mzstatic.com/image/thumb/PurpleSource221/v4/70/f5/60/70f5605c-f355-b467-9e34-367f0f333993/Screenshot_iPhone_18_Pro_Max_09-20-2026_at_7.58.27_U202fAM.png/1320x2868.png) ## Rootshell Rating Breakdown in United States - 5 stars: 40 (95%) - 4 stars: 0 (0%) - 3 stars: 0 (0%) - 2 stars: 1 (2%) - 1 stars: 1 (2%) ## Rootshell Reviews in United States ### ***** "Great app for iPhone and iPad" This application meets every requirement, serving as a unified tool for SSH and high-performance screen sharing on Mac. One enhancement request: include a mouse pointer option alongside touch during screen sharing. -- sandy#K, 2026-08-19 ### **--- "Has potential, but increasingly bloated with slop" EDIT: sorry app author i ain’t allat, happy for u / sorry that happened tho. oh also i forgot to mention: the ‘funny’ ‘jokes’ shown while connecting to a remote host are truly awful claudeslop I was psyched when I read about this project—a libghostty-based, totally free SSH client as a desperately needed alternative to Termius & Blink? Yes, please. And the rendering is indeed very nice thanks to libghostty. There are some nice features like the Tailscale SSH integration. Unfortunately the app has very clearly been developed with heavy LLM assistance to pile in feature upon feature, and the cracks are starting to show. Lots of awesome sounding features barely work once you give them a try—for example, screen sharing inexplicably has *seconds* of lag on the same connection Screens is perfectly snappy on. And then there are the useless features, like the location diary… why? Also the UI, though pretty enough, is absolutely infuriating, not documented, and not discoverable. The entire project IMO is a cautionary tale on the dangers of `claude —yolo`. -- RoyViRoy, 2026-08-10 ### ***** "The very best, finally!" Great design. Everything I need -- ApplesNumber1Fan, 2026-07-26 ### ***** "Great App!" I was originally very suspicious of this app due to some detected high background activity. However, after a couple of weeks of careful packet monitoring I see I was mistaken! This is an excellent application with a nice interface and I can confirm it does not phone home. -- pngwen, 2026-07-23 ### ***** "Best terminal app for Claude on iPad" Developer is super responsive and goes above and beyond to make this app great. You can to resume sessions with tssh and change lots of configuration settings. Very friendly with tmux and Claude Code terminal. -- ContextMonkey, 2026-07-08 ### ***** "hands down best terminal for ios" like many others, i’ve tried just about every other paid or free terminal app for ios and all of them left something to be desired in one way or another (or wanted some unacceptable subscription fee to make their app usable as a daily utility). this app is so sick it just fills me with joy. smooth, fast, stable, modern (libghostty 🤘) with more features than i could ask for, and nothing asked in return. god bless these devs! -- throwthrowyourboat, 2026-05-30 ### ***** "Ipad Dev’s Dream" Coming from competition, I was having lots of issues with artifacting, especially re-renders coming from the codex/gemini cli. This blows everything else out of the water in terms of performance while solving the issues I was having on other terminals. If you have a neovim + tmux setup (or terminal first in general); rootshell feels extremely snappy and customization/setup was straightforward. It utilizes Ghostty’s “engine” (libcore) under the hood hence the great performance. One of my favorite features is the fullscreen mode avoiding the clunky UI that many other options have. -- thedwncmpy, 2026-05-11 ### ***** "Simply Amazing" Incredible work. It has been so hard to find an iOS terminal that integrates Tailscale cleanly. How do I donate? Not kidding it’s that good. Keep up the great work dev -- toomuchdope, 2026-05-09 ### ***** "An actually good terminal app" Normally don’t write reviews but honestly the work here is stellar. This is far better than even any of the paid terminals available on iOS/iPadOS. Not even close. There are a few kinks at the moment (reconnecting a tssh session after a while away sometimes fails, can’t seem to move tabs around), but this is new and I assume will get ironed out relatively quickly. I like it so much that I swapped my Mac over from Cmux/ghostty, which says a lot despite the kinks. It is worth your time to try, even on macOS. My only real complaint is that I have no way to give money to this dev (not that free isn’t awesome and makes the software really accessible, but I wouldn’t mind giving at least *something*) -- ElijahRou, 2026-04-28 ### ***** "Fantastic work" The number of features built into this is crazy. So good. Congrats to the team. -- erbmicha, 2026-04-26 ### ***** "Better than anything else" Holy cow, felt like I tried everything else, but this actually gives you the full screen and just works. Amazing work on this. Would give it 10 stars if I could -- KalebJS, 2026-04-24 [View all Rootshell reviews and detailed analytics on AppTail](https://app.apptail.io/signup?utm_campaign=ai-crawl&utm_content=reviews) ## Rootshell Store Rankings | Chart | Country | Category | Rank | |-------|---------|----------|------| | Top Free | Hong Kong SAR China | Developer Tools | #23 | | Top Free | Taiwan | Developer Tools | #34 | | Top Free | Greece | Developer Tools | #47 | | Top Free | United Arab Emirates | Developer Tools | #47 | | Top Free | United States | Developer Tools | #55 | | Top Free | Japan | Developer Tools | #59 | | Top Free | Türkiye | Developer Tools | #75 | | Top Free | New Zealand | Developer Tools | #75 | | Top Free | Portugal | Developer Tools | #76 | | Top Free | Switzerland | Developer Tools | #77 | | Top Free | France | Developer Tools | #100 | | Top Free | Malaysia | Developer Tools | #103 | | Top Free | Singapore | Developer Tools | #106 | | Top Free | Philippines | Developer Tools | #126 | | Top Free | Sweden | Developer Tools | #129 | | Top Free | Indonesia | Developer Tools | #144 | | Top Free | Spain | Developer Tools | #146 | | Top Free | Austria | Developer Tools | #149 | | Top Free | Australia | Developer Tools | #159 | | Top Free | Russia | Developer Tools | #178 | | Top Free | South Korea | Developer Tools | #204 | | Top Free | Canada | Developer Tools | #214 | | Top Free | Ukraine | Developer Tools | #215 | | Top Free | Germany | Developer Tools | #215 | | Top Free | Nigeria | Developer Tools | #221 | | Top Free | United Kingdom | Developer Tools | #228 | ## Rootshell Discovered Keywords - path input - ssh terminal - key board color - ssh - command prompt - ssh client - la terminal ssh client - ssh tunnel - terminal ssh - remote it ## Rootshell Available In - [United States](https://apptail.io/app/rootshell-local-terminal-ssh-aWrz/united-states) - [India](https://apptail.io/app/rootshell-local-terminal-ssh-aWrz/india) - [Spain](https://apptail.io/app/rootshell-local-terminal-ssh-aWrz/spain) - [Japan](https://apptail.io/app/rootshell-local-terminal-ssh-aWrz/japan) - [Canada](https://apptail.io/app/rootshell-local-terminal-ssh-aWrz/canada) - [Germany](https://apptail.io/app/rootshell-local-terminal-ssh-aWrz/germany) - [United Kingdom](https://apptail.io/app/rootshell-local-terminal-ssh-aWrz/united-kingdom) - [Australia](https://apptail.io/app/rootshell-local-terminal-ssh-aWrz/australia) - [Hong Kong SAR China](https://apptail.io/app/rootshell-local-terminal-ssh-aWrz/hong-kong) - [United Arab Emirates](https://apptail.io/app/rootshell-local-terminal-ssh-aWrz/united-arab-emirates) - 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