Terminal on iPhone and iPad

The Terminal tab is a shell on an open server. It uses the server’s connection, so there is no second login. Each open server has one.

Steps

  1. Open the server in Servers.
  2. Tap Terminal.
  3. Type a command in the Command field at the bottom, then tap the return arrow next to it. While you type, the commands you ran on that server before show above the field: tap one to fill it in.

To type in the shell itself, for example in vim, top or less, tap the terminal. The keyboard comes up.

The keys a phone keyboard lacks

While the terminal has the keyboard, a bar above it has esc, ctrl, tab, the four arrows, |, ~, / and -, and a button that hides the keyboard. For Control-C, tap ctrl, then c.

With the keyboard down

Big buttons at the bottom:

  • Stop: stops the command that runs (Control-C).
  • Return: presses Return in the shell.
  • Type: brings the keyboard up.

Scroll, select and copy

  • Drag up or down to go back through what the shell printed. While you look back, a button says how many new lines came: tap it to see the newest. In full-screen programs such as less and vim, a drag moves with the arrow keys.
  • Touch and hold a word to select it, and drag to select more. Then tap Copy. Paste types the copied text at the prompt. Select All selects everything.
  • Pinch to make the text bigger or smaller.

Open the file a command names

When a command prints a file’s name with a line number (an error from a compiler, grep -n), a button such as main.c:12 shows above the command line. Tap it to open the file in the editor at that line.

More shells

  • Tap + (New Terminal) and choose an open server: another shell there.
  • With more than one terminal, the menu at the top left shows another one. Close Terminal (×) ends the shell you see; a server’s last terminal stays.
  • To end the last one, tap Disconnect (ⓧ) at the top left: it closes the connection to the server too.
  • When the shell ends, for example after exit, tap Return for a new one.

Tips

  • AirSCP keeps the commands you run on each server. Search finds them and runs them again, on one server or on several.
  • On an iPad, a keyboard works as on a computer: arrows, Esc, Tab, Control keys and function keys go to the shell, and ⌘C and ⌘V copy and paste. Full Window gives the terminal the whole screen. See iPad and iPhone Duo.
  • There is no terminal for S3 storage, nor for an account that allows file transfers (sftp) only.