a-Shell Reviews

by Pjdom

It deserves a place on at least providing something. But in honesty, like all the ‘terminal emulators’ for IOS they are pretty pathetic. GNU/Linux/BASH/KSH are so far in advance of anything offered on the Apple platforms it hardly make it worthwhile dealing with them. My solution to the complete lack of features (and commands) available in IOS terminal shell is to the stead use an ssh terminal provider and just go to a real *INUX workstation. It just became to frustrating dealing with the limitations of IOS shells.

by Leonphoto

App has completely stopped working after most recent update. Just crashes when attempting to open. I have tried uninstalling, reinstalling, and restarting my device several times and it just doesn’t work at all anymore!

by KingChrysalis

It appears that every single command on the system just isn't present. Even basic UNIX utilities like ls can't be found. Environment variables don't expand either. The only two commands that the shell could find was "help", which didn't do much in terms of help, and "sh", which is not actually the UNIX shell but the fake one that aShell ships.

by Rhinozz

It was working fine when 2 things happened. 1. I pasted a string and aShell went wild, and it pasted without creating a new line.
2. I tried to use twitch-dl and aShell crashed and then changed font. I don’t even know how that’s possible but it did. I hope these can be fixed, I really appreciate the work!

P.S. Quick question: where do the files “downloaded” go?

by Knmorgan

Downloaded aShell , ssh’d somewhere, and aShell seemingly froze. Closed aShell and re-opened and it was back, but the cursor was all over the place and make it very difficult to tell what was going on. Some tools have full versions (e.g. full-blown BSD grep is available, though I’d prefer GNU), and others are seemingly partially-implemented copycats (e.g. ssh). The shell itself isn’t even close to compatible with bash; basic things like variables, string interpolation, and if/for/while/etc do not exist.

I was hoping to find a decent terminal emulator I could use for work. Unfortunately, this is not it.

by Stevo3985

It sure promises a LOT of features I need, but I guess I’ll stick with the Alpine Linux container in iSH, cuz aShell 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 aShell 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 aShell to respond to my iPhone 13 Pro text inputs from any of my 3 keyboards) 🤦‍♂️

Fix it and I’ll fix my review. PLEASE!!!!

by Coffeenobagel

Thanks for creating Carnets and a-shell. They’ve both been essential for iOS programming. However, it seems that every app is restricted to accessing and modifying files that are only within their own respective directories? I can’t seem to cd my way into another folder that resides in the Carnets folder and vice versa (because Carnets doesn’t have its own terminal, for example) And secondly, there seems to be a problem when trying to install sklearn in a-shell. It keeps throwing up the error “setuptools not found” but when I pip install setuptools, it says that “requirement already fulfilled” and I have been able to use setuptools when making packages before so it seems that it is there but I can’t install sklearn? I’m not sure what can be done. Apologies if I’m doing something wrong. Thanks.

by Itsreallyjustsamk

A 4096 bit rsa key generates much faster on here than iSH.

If you copy a cat’d public key and paste it into your authorized keys through another ssh app you’ll probably run into denied permission issues when trying to connect. For reference, this appeared to be a clipboard issue when pasting the cat outputted a-shell key into the authorized keys file of a server already connected via Termius.

Tap support could be better. Cursor could stay in prompt when a selection occurs but doesn’t.

So far it’s not a great SSH tool. More of a novelty shell for limited local play.

by Sstevi

This is a very VERY cool app. I love the fact that you are able to actually access real phone files and change them, unlike some fake ones I’ve seen out there. It has many of all the Linux commands as well, which is awesome. One thing I am confused is why it doesn’t have the sudo command, and why I “need permission” to access some files. Overall, as a new Linux user, I find this to be VERY cool. If anyone can help with the permission issue, that would be much appreciated.

by RSnake

It would be nice to be able to have a bashrc or something that allows you to control prompts, and a ps and kill functionality and screen, etc…. for batch jobs. But the really odd thing is hitting a button (other than space and enter keys for some reason) won’t repeat the character - that’s super annoying in vim for instance, because it means you have to do some funky things just to move the cursor around at any sort of speed. [EDIT: The developer said there’s a setting to use the cap’s lock as an escape key that if you disable, allows you to get this feature. For those who don’t know you can use control-[ to get an escape char too.] But overall really cool/useful. Even with a lack of wget (not a fan of curl), you can do pip install wget then python -m wget and poof.

by Forced Tutorials Are Lame

Hi dev, if you read this please implement tab completion of commands and parameters for commands. Please also add more buttons on the helper bar (hyphen, double quote, semicolon).

the existing tab completion should list all commands matching user input, e.g. if user types pip and hits tab it should list all commands starting with pip including pip, pip3, pip3.9, etc.

Thanks for the great app and keep up the awesome work!

by Tabuariki

aShell is great, but the absence and inability to install nano using sudo install nano takes it down just a tiny notch. Nano is just such a simple and easy text editor. My go to for programming. Plz give

by SquEu

I have been using it for educational purposes. I am currently learning the basics of python through the “Python For Everybody” course on Coursera. I was able to write short scripts on a-shell to pull and process data from the web.

My only problem so far is that I am struggling to install scipy on a-shell. Hopefully I will find a solution to that problem soon.

by Austin10022153

can we lowkey emulate inside this another copy of aShell or the fs unmounted from local to cloud in order to allow for chmod , chown, etc, oh and our own root file system just to emulate Linux even if it is agentless . Right now it looks like Apple wants to give us rw , r, r. Like why bother lol. At least all the python executables are integrating visually but DONT touch it or DARWIN will scream. Smh lol. Apple Apple Apple...⌫☮︎︎🔝☠️☠️☠️📲🕹🔑🗝🛒🎈📦📦📦🔐🔓🔓🔗🖇📂🆔⚛️♨️♨️♨️7️⃣7️⃣7️⃣⏺▶️⏏️🔂🔀↩️♾🔝🔚🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️🏴‍☠️

by Serge Guz

aShell deserves five stars for being as amazingly capable and straightforward as I feel bash can be given iOS sandboxing and other limitations. I have tried a few different terminal/bash/ssh apps now this is definitely a favorite of mine. I like the mini version too not because I need the light weight but because it means two commands can run at once (if I fight with iOS memory management to keep both apps “foregrounded” 😂).

by PhilTheScott

Thanks so much to the developer of this amazing shell. I’ve been trying to find a way to turn my iPad into a coding sandbox for a while, to exercise new coding ideas without having to boot up my laptop. This is just what I was looking for.

Not sure if the Apple restrictions would allow for it, but it would be amazing if node/npm could be ported to this environment.

by Kazango

I just downloaded this, and I have fiddled with it a bit, and I am astonished. My little command-line heart went pitter-pat as I was able to successfully do even the simplest things before I have even started to look at the full capabilities.

Thank you!

by Alderem

While the ability to navigate around the iOS file system is novel, what I really like is the simple integration of SSH into a-Shell. I can remote login to my home server seamlessly. And a-Shell supplements my keyboard with crucial-to-terminal keys that Apple doesn’t provide: Tab, Control, and Esc.

by Chad Wild Clay/CWC

Me and my friends have messed around a bit with aShell but I don’t know how to use the remote shutoff command. If you could give me a template that would be great. THANKS!

by Nycvelo

I’ve grown frustrated with several terminal and/or ssh clients that offered limited features, only supported old ciphers, etc. a-Shell is a real working terminal, and is as useful for working with remote BSD and Linux boxes as a terminal app on MacOS. Bravo!

by Doctor Nerd

a-Shell is an amazing asset for the iPadOS/iOS ecosystem. A fast, feature rich terminal, full python (including modules) and vim support (including plugins), symbolic linking from iCloud files to on-device locations, curl, and much more, it makes the iPad a full computing environment. Thank you for spending what must be many hours on this, and know that aShell is used daily.

by GrapsterJunior

After running both iSH and a-shell, I found more capabilities in a-shell. Plus, with local and remote shell capabilities, there is a better method for running Linux or Unix commands, sftp’d over from a cloud server and run in the a-shell command line.
I was able to run inxi from a recent sftp grab and piped results to a local text file. ISH cannot do that yet, as ssh and sftp are not yet implemented.

by JohnnyK909

I love the terminal but it needs modifier keys on the keyboard. How does one ctrl+c and many other common keybindings? It would be a wonderful terminal if the author would add ctrl, alt, and the super keys.

So the developer responded to this review and thank you for explaining where the modifier keys are however it would have been nice to have this information. The icons don’t look like the modifier keys. IMHO the author should use words instead.

by Michexta

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.

by SmallBraain

It's a surprisingly good shell for ios. Thankyou. I think some more customization would help such as larger arrow keys or maybe a built in dev keyboard with easier special char access.

by Zhpinkman

I tried several other clients to use ssh on them but they’re absolutely useless and required lots of configs to set up.
aShell allowed to me use ssh just as I use it with a terminal.
Tnx.

by Stl5n0

Using terminal to process Magic Lantern (look it up 😉) files and videos with ffmpeg and other CLI programs taught me the basics of terminal commands, coding, etc., but the ability to sit here 10 years later and run processes on my iPhone that required a $1500 iMac back then makes my special parts tingle. Thanks for creating aShell, you the moth@fúckíń man.

One question, though. How would one go about updating the native ffmpeg to the latest release on an iPhone Xr? Looks like ffmpeg 5.0 Lorentz is the latest release, and the native a-shell ffmpeg version says 4.4. Thanks.

by JustACleverKid

I know, it takes a while for changes to roll out to aShell Store. But it would be cool for my shortcuts to work on Mac as well.

by The Geek On Skates

This is exactly what I was looking for (and trying to build as a web app lol). I finally have a use for my iPad !! lol

Seriously tho, this is the coolest app to hit aShell Store since Pythonista! I’m gonna build so much cool stuff to run on this.

🤓❤️ this 💻 !!!!

Yes it has its stupid and unnecessary restrictions, but IMO that’s just Apple being Apple. Not the developer’s fault lol. This is the closest I’ve ever seen to a real computer on iOS. It’s totally amazing and u gotta try it.

by NeoYokel

There are now quite a few terminal emulator-esque apps on aShell 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 aShell, 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!

by Mehdi.13r

It’s very pleasing that we can have such terminal environment in iOS and iPadOS.

Still, I have a suggestion: a package manager. If we have access to a package manager like macOS’s Homebrew or Linux’s APT, it would be incredible!

I know it’s a hard work, but it would be worth it. I would love to help with doing that, and I’m sure there are other people who feel that way as well.

Best of Luck!

by Eternaleternalaudrey

impressive shell on IOS.
when I use “pip install tensorflow”command, it will always go wrong: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement tensorflow