Support & FAQ

The connection drops when my screen locks.

iOS suspends apps in the background, and the SSH connection goes with it. Turn on tmux for that host: the shell then runs inside a tmux session on the server, so it keeps running while the app is suspended, and reconnecting reattaches it where it left off. Shell SSH asks the first time and remembers the answer — per host, or as a default for all of them. Closing a tab closes its tmux session, so nothing is left running unnoticed.

Authentication failed, but my password is right.

When a login is refused, Shell SSH asks the server which authentication methods it accepts and tells you. If it reports that the server does not take passwords, the server wants a key. If it reports that no supported method was offered, the server is most likely asking for keyboard-interactive authentication, which Shell SSH does not support — use a key there too.

Where do I put my public key?

Go to Keys, pick your key, and copy the public key. Append it as one line to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the server. You can generate an Ed25519 key on the device, or import an existing Ed25519 or RSA key, including a passphrase-protected one.

“Warning: Server Identity Changed.”

The server is presenting a different host key than the one you trusted before. This is the same warning ssh gives from a desktop, and Shell SSH blocks the connection until you deal with it.

It is usually innocent: the server was rebuilt, reinstalled, or replaced, and got a new key. It is not innocent if nothing about the server changed — that can mean traffic is being intercepted. Check the new fingerprint against the server itself before you accept it. Shell SSH shows fingerprints in the same SHA-256 form ssh-keygen prints, so the two can be compared directly.

To trust a new key deliberately, remove the old fingerprint from the trusted list first, then connect again and verify the new one.

How do I copy text out of the terminal?

Press and hold to select, then tap Copy. Copy All takes the whole scrollback. With a hardware keyboard, Command-C and Command-V work as usual. Pasting several lines at once shows a warning first, because a multi-line paste could run several commands in a row. Copied text can be cleared from the clipboard automatically.

How do snippet placeholders work?

There are three forms. {{name}} asks you for a value. {{name?}} is optional and may be left empty. {{name=default}} is prefilled with the default, which you can change.

So a snippet written as tail -n {{lines=100}} {{file}} asks for a file and offers 100 lines, which you can accept or overwrite. About a hundred common commands ship as examples, and the library is searchable and reorderable.

Can I transfer files?

No. There is no SFTP or SCP browser in Shell SSH — it is a terminal, not a file manager. Commands you run on the server, such as scp or rsync between two servers, work as they always do.

The keys I need aren’t on the keyboard.

Shell SSH puts a key row above the keyboard with esc, ctrl, tab, the arrows and common symbols. It can be turned off when a hardware keyboard is attached. For a fuller set — alt, function keys, the whole arrow cluster — and for those keys in other apps as well, see Shell Keyboard, a system-wide keyboard by the same developer.

Can I have two terminals at once?

Sessions open as tabs on both iPhone and iPad. On iPad, two terminals can sit side by side with a draggable divider. Tabs and the split are restored when the app reopens, and the selected tab reconnects immediately.

My key isn’t accepted, and it is an ECDSA key.

ECDSA private keys are not supported for login. Ed25519 and RSA are. Generate an Ed25519 key in Shell SSH and add its public half to the server.