WebSSH - Sysadmin Toolbox

I recently got the Apple Magic Keyboard for my 12.9 ipad. I soon thought my iPad might be able to meet my needs well enough that I would not need a laptop. What I was missing was the ability to create an SSH connection from my iPad to a computer and also have an encrypted tunnel for things like a Remote Desktop app such as VNC. I found that WebSSH provides both functions and it was fairly easy to learn the app well enough to use it. After using the free version for a while, I purchased the Pro version. The price of the Pro version is a very reasonable, one time cost. The developer has been very responsive, listens to user suggestions and is actively improving the app.

The app constantly tries to log in my account without my intention. No one knows what they want to do. -- update -- The developer asked me to share my log files to double check the issue. I do not have the log files, and here is why: I am a student at Purdue University, and I used this app to log in the server in the university. The university used a two-step authentification app called Boilerkey. When I try to log in the server, I will get a notification on my phone, and I need to allow the access by accepting it on my phone (not only use the password of the server). I installed this ssh app on my iPad, and used it for a while where nothing went wrong. But later that day, I got a lot of notification on my phone asking for permission of access. I uninstalled this ssh app, and reset my Boilerkey (the password for logging in the account on server). Things went back to normal again. I have to say that I found no suspious logging-in of my account (for those lots of notifications which were popping out in a short amount of time, I did not accept any of them). But there must be some issue happening in the ssh app. If this app has auto-reconnect features, please TURN IT OFF by default since it is doing something out of my expectation. For my own experience, this app destroyed my Boilerkey (there were so many notifications so the university shut my account off) just as if it is doing something evil. By the way, I even paid for this app at the beginning of using it since it looked good.

First, as to its job as a SSH client, it seems to work fine. I’ve connected to three different servers with both password and private key authentication, and it works great. That having been said, the UX of this app, itself, it horrible. All the little things that we take for granted nowadays are just poorly implemented. For example, 1. To add a connection, you have to tap a button, which makes another button appear and you have to tap on that. Weird UX choice there. 2. When adding a connect, you can type in a group name. You can’t pick from any list of existing groups, but rather you just have to hope you didn’t misspell it. 3. To edit a connection, there’s no obvious way to edit. You might guess long-press, but that doesn’t do anything. You have to swipe to the left and then you get a kludgy half-screen presentation of a tiny edit button. 4. When adding private key, you can’t pick a file from the iPadOS file system, but rather you have to find your key file (outside of this app), open the key file, copy the contents to your clipboard, jump back to this app, and paste it in. This is just a few examples of the really curious/confusing design choices, but these sorts of things happen throughout the app. This has, simply put, incredibly clumsy, anachronistic user interface. In terms of desirable new features, I’d request the ability to, for example, store the connections in iCloud. It’s frustrating to have such a cumbersome user interface and have to recreate the connections again on different iOS devices. But once you get your connections set up, it seems to work well.