a-Shell

a-Shell is an outstanding terminal interface app for iOS, boasting a user-friendly design and powerful features. It supports a wide range of Linux commands, enabling seamless interaction with servers and local files. Its robust performance ensures smooth operation, even with complex scripts, and regular updates enhance its reliability and security. Whether for professional development or personal projects, a-Shell is a must-have for bringing the full power of a terminal interface to your iOS device.

It sure promises a LOT of features I need, but I guess I’ll stick with the Alpine Linux container in iSH, cuz this app won’t even recognize my text inputs. I am not an iOS noob, and my day, I am a systems engineer for a network video company. I NEED these utilities on my iPhone, but not a single item can be used in the full @-shell and the mini is incapable of doing anything from inside the container where it exists. I couldn’t even run a simple SCP, rsync, or even ssh session to try and move files from a remote server. If this app isn’t a scam, it needs a lot of work, cuz I have worked through a whole week worth of remedy attempts, and have tried to reboot, reinstall, even factory reset and restored my iPhone from DFU mode (you read that correctly, I need this badly enough that I went scorched earth and started from scratch, and STILL cannot get this app to respond to my iPhone 13 Pro text inputs from any of my 3 keyboards) 🤦‍♂️ Fix it and I’ll fix my review. PLEASE!!!!

There are now quite a few terminal emulator-esque apps on the App Store, but I've been using a-Shell since it was joined only by Blink (from which it was forked) and iSH. As it was then, a-Shell remains the only one of these with which one can actually accomplish command line tasks *locally* beyond screwing around. I am ultimately not a command line native, and I don't have the basic theory beneath my use of Python scripts, yet I've been able to accomplish startlingly powerful things within this app, thanks in large part to gracious and immediately-available support via the project's Discord server. If you've found yourself here by way of a Siri Shortcut's requirement, I would encourage you to take the time to investigate the commands said shortcut(s) run - try running them yourself!