Blink Shell, Build & Code Reviews

I’ve been using Blink for a few years now on two different iPads. The price is well worth it for many reasons. Top reasons are things like turning on geo tracking to keep your ssh sessions active where you can’t use mosh, great ssh key management, and super-fast rendering of the terminals. There are others, but this is a good start.

The v15 update is really great. Adding in VSCode integration is wicked cool, and works really well.

To top it all off, the support from the developer is top-notch. I had an issue, submitted a github issue, and had a response within minutes (it was user error…). And just scouring the GitHub issue tracker, and seeing the activity from the development crew, is very reassuring.

Bottom line: I’ve tried a few different terminal apps with decent success. Once I purchased Blink, I uninstalled the other ones. It does everything I want, does it well, and probably does more than I use. Great app, great support.

I started using Blink when I replaced my Macbook with an iPad Pro. Two+ years in and I'm convinced this is one of the better decisions I've made, primarily thanks to this great app. I can do everything I need to do with Blink and a remote server. The devs are responsive, BlinkShellBuildCode is continually updated with new features, and the community is great.

If you live in the terminal, or want to, you owe it to yourself to try BlinkShellBuildCode. It's the only app I use for hours every single day.

Of iOS terminals. I have downloaded all the free terminals and they are… terminal; sure to die soon from lack of developer support or functionality. Blink has been on my devices for 2 years now and the updates always seem to be too good to be true -Me-“ya right there’s no way that they…oh wow that works…”
-stoked to be “grandfathered” after just 2 years and lifetime support and updates… had to support further development. Mahalo Nui Loa!

I recently setup a Linux box on my network to work as a server. My ultimate goal is to use this mostly from the terminal. I’ve been setting up connecting to the shell from different devices, and started looking at SSH capable clients. Blink was and option, and there were others, too. No real surprise.

After going through some online reviews and doing some reading, I went with Blink. At first I was confused by the basic terminal Blink presented, but then I started typing and got it.

Within seconds I was able to connect to my target device, and understand the interface Blink provides.

Well done.

I’ll preface this review by saying I hate subscriptions. I will never rent software. The bulk of this review concerns the new subscription model, so feel free to skip it if your feelings differ.

I saw a developer response to a review indicate that the new subscription model exists to pay for new features that incur a server cost. That’s fine and understandable. However, requiring all users to pay these fees even if they have no intention of using these new features is pretty gross. Ideally you would only pay the rental fee if you were actually using the service.

It’s nice that they allow existing users to continue using the base application nag free. I’ll give a star for that.

The application itself is good. If I weren’t grandfathered in, however, I would look elsewhere. It’s not sustainable as an average consumer to rent every piece of software we use in perpetuity.

Single-handedly brings the power of the iPad Pro to Software/Cloud engineering workflows unlocking both the future of portable operations/development and thinclient-style remote access.

Not to be stated lightly: better than iTerm2.

5-stars from an SRE going on 2 years using the iPad Pro both as my primary workstation and access terminal.

I saw a new iteration of BlinkShellBuildCode with a new purchase model and was worried I’d have to shop for something new. But the $0 purchase honoring the past version, plus the seamless data migration, immediately put me at ease. I’ll look at what the local features are someday, but for now I can just keep on keeping on.

I’ve been using this on a daily basis for the last 5 years. It is by far the best SSH client on iOS, and one of the very best iOS apps overall. They continuously push features that go beyond what I thought was even possible on iOS. Rock solid! (and more than worth the price)

A perfect app for those looking for a simple tool to SSH or Mosh into servers. And even more useful with the built in additional commands that can help with troubleshooting and gathering information (ping, Whois, etc). I haven’t yet had a chance to play to much with the VSCode functionality, but that looks equally impressive.

I had a need for a terminal on my iPad and decided to give blink a try, but it seemed to have some major issues that make it challenging even to use its built-in commands. The first thing I noticed is that I couldn’t send a SIGINT (^c) to any process that was running, as the input from the Magic Keyboard seemed to just be lost. There were also some oddities with some of the utilities, which ended up with me failing to SSH into my newly launched Linux system.

I ended up giving up and going with a different terminal app.

So sad that apple still has not fixed the key repeat bug but BlinkShellBuildCode has implemented it as a workaround and is honestly game changing. a-zA-Z0-9 keys do not repeat on iPad external keyboards (including Apple ones) but BlinkShellBuildCode implemented it!

Now I can take my ipad with me and access our businesses infrastructure instead of catering around a laptop. Thanks Blink!!

I purchased BlinkShellBuildCode some years ago. Now I am being asked to subscribe or annoyed to update and buy-in to the subscription model. I could understand this for those who wish to adopt new features, but the legacy version should remove the annoyance to upgrade and give the option to suppress those messages. If I could give 0 stars for this decision I would.

I am not sure who the geniuses were who created this, but hats off for sure. Beautiful, I can now use my iPad in the fashion I intended. Great work all, really! Thank you.

This is the best shell of all shells available in iOS. Worth paying $20/year to support this shell. I’ve used this shell every single day for the last year.

And the devs keep making it better and better

Thank you for doing the transition to the new app correctly! Excellent app and excellent work

My go to terminal app. Throw in mosh and you won me over.

When I saw the visual studio support I thought: "Wow, this is just amazing!" but when I saw the 20USD a year... that kills a lot of the purpose of using this. So, will have to think about it before using this instead of iSH (which is free)

I’m shocked by the snappiness of BlinkShellBuildCode and very feature packed. Totally recommended

I've been using Blink for several years and it just keeps getting better and better. I consider it an absolutely essential app for my iPad Pro, where I use it to SSH into a Linux machine to have full access to Emacs. And using Mosh (instead of SSH directly) means that I can simply open my iPad at any time and my previous SSH session is still there, immediately ready for me to use. Amazing. BlinkShellBuildCode developer(s) are highly responsive and take feedback seriously and their dedication to keeping the software open-source makes me more than happy to support BlinkShellBuildCode. I'm not a fan of subscriptions, but I was more than happy to subscribe to help support future development. I'd give it 10 stars if I could.

BlinkShellBuildCode is very useful and I think it’s greate. One request if you could, I am visually em visually impaired and when you type a command in, like git clone or apt update, build mosh it doesn’t give any feedback to let you know the process has started. But a thousand times better than all the other apps you can find in the AppStore. I love it. Thank you very much. I would rate BlinkShellBuildCode 100 stars but there’s no option for that.

I can’t say enough nice things about this software. It’s a pleasure to use every single time. I prefer working from my iPad for most things now thanks to blinkshell.I can login to my servers from literally the other side of the planet with my iPad and get real work done. That kind of value is easily worth more than the cost of subscription. Thanks for the awesome app!

Was told that existing users would be able to use BlinkShellBuildCode for regular ssh. But there are only subscription options and the like to restore purchases does nothing. If you’re not going to support existing customers in the new app, maybe consider to put the proper icon back on the old app?

Update: Thank you for your response, if I had known about the changes, I would certainly have “taken the time”. I will look for the option to restore the icon and hope that BlinkShellBuildCode contributes to function in future.

BlinkShellBuildCode itself:
I got BlinkShellBuildCode when it was still fee, and it was glorious. Good handful of tools, works with files, open source, very very functional, clean, minimally to no glitches, very adaptable,

And then:
I updated it and suddenly stuck with a pay wall of $100+ dollars for unlimited use and $20 a week for that limitation instead.

Why 1 start out of 5:
BlinkShellBuildCode was glorious, if I had rated it before the paywall update I would have rated it beyond the scale, it was the very best in the market. As an avid user with BlinkShellBuildCode actively downloaded on all my devices, I fully expected to be grandfathered in and was not. Cannot get ahold of the devs or any sort of support either. So 1 star till the issues get fixed. Namely my inability to use it after already being an active user and recommending it to all my Linux/Unix heads.
Thanks guys.
👍

All of the reviews lead me to believe I’d at least be able to try this out before paying for a subscription, but it’s just a slide show of ads for cloud dev boxes. The devs respond to complaints about the subscriptions as “we keep adding features so you should keep paying”. That’s fine, but it appears that they’re adding only non-related services such as the cloud dev boxes. I don’t care about running things in somebody else’s VMs. I just want a terminal emulator without the dark patterns, thank you.

This is by far the best terminal application I've used for the iPAD, the customization features allow me to make it look and feel exactly like a unix like terminal with proper key binds! The dev team has also been great with constant updates, new features and community engagement.

Ah, the description to migrate from classic to this updated version is a bit obscure.

Fortunately, I found it and moshed again.

It works fine.

Thank you.

Just wish the instructions for migrating was a bit more clearer. Hence 3 stars. Otherwise it would be 5 for I’m a heavy mosh user (in terms of basic Linux shell and irccing).

The previous version of blink was *just* a professional-class ssh and mosh client. Now it's a professional-class ssh and mosh client, with a whole professional-class text editor built in. If you do any coding at all on an idevice this is a must.

Been using UNIX CLI and SSH for more than 25 years, and this is the best client and toolset combo I’ve ever seen, on ANY platform. I was a long-time fan of Prompt (big love for Panic), but blink is the client I didn’t know I needed until I tried it out. Absolutely peerless.

I get the point of steady revenue with subscription (I work for tech startups myself), but ssh is a basic functionality that shouldn’t need significant innovation effort (usually the driving force of this pricing model besides greed). I’ll pay a one time fee no problem, but I’m not going to have another subscription in my life for a technology that has been around for close to half a century.

Switched back to iOS recently and remembered I had bought a SSH program called Blink. Sad to see the version I spent money on abandoned (and thus doesn’t fit my device’s screen), and instead the company pushing more subscription garbage.

No I don’t want to pay yearly to connect to my own server. No I don’t want a white labeled VPS. Just give me a SSH terminal, that’s it. Stop adding features past that. It’s ridiculous that I can’t find an SSH client on iOS that doesn’t follow this insane subscription model.

Paid $20 for the prior version. New addition to our family meant I hadn’t used BlinkShellBuildCode in a bit over a year. Migration to the new “Classic” license for version 15, which BlinkShellBuildCode Developer stated on Reddit has all features of the prior version, is no longer supported. He also stated that the classic version works, but won’t be tested on iOS 17. $20 out the window.

I’m all for developers moving to a subscription model to support their business, or charging for a new version, but closing the upgrade path completely is a scummy business practice and it’s part of why this business model is reviled. Other Mac and iPad tools that have migrated to this model have a support line for migrating if you missed the advertised window. Alfred, another power user tool on MacOS, is a good example of how to handle upgrades without screwing over your users.

I bought the original app to support the developer. However, they got greedy and have moved to the subscription based model to get even more money.

All I do with BlinkShellBuildCode is SSH to servers in my local network and do not need any of the ‘advanced’ crap the subscription is supposed to offer. The developer should either reimburse the original purchase or provide the basic functionality back to users who originally purchased this crap.

They could have left this alone and made a new app. Instead, they went out of their way to destroy a tool we already paid for. They could have done nothing and I might have been interested in their new tools.

Profit seeking by destroying what works already is the worst form of entrepreneurship reserved for the worst offenders in the history of capital markets.

Win by making better tools, not destroying the great ones already made. This is a tragic unnecessary abuse of the digital IP system and apple should revoke your license

I happily paid 20 USD for BlinkShellBuildCode a few years ago and really loved its clean responsive minimal interface and the reliability of its connections, but went a while without needing it and didn’t get any notifications or emails warning me of the eventual deprecation of that app.

Its frustrating to find that in order to continue using BlinkShellBuildCode I’d have to shell out a monthly subscription. Reading some of the other comments I’m seeing the devs suggest continuing to use the old version unsupported, or build the new version from source since its open source. However, the old version seems to not even be rendering text properly on my ipad anymore, and as someone without a mac to access XCode, building from source isnt an option either.

I understand a subscription might be necessary to cover recurring server costs and add new features. But for someone who paid a not-insignificant sum for BlinkShellBuildCode and doesn’t need those features, it feels like a pretty raw deal.

BlinkShellBuildCode is my favorite SSH and Mosh client. I appreciate the local Unix utilities it provides and the fact that it looks and behaves like a terminal emulator. The visual minimalism by default is excellent.

My one issue is with the recurring subscription model. I would rate it five stars if there was a one-time purchase option (even if it was per device — I’d happily pay $5-10 per device I needed Blink on). It makes it hard to recommend to interested friends or colleagues when there isn’t a free option or a one-time purchase option. Thankfully, I was grandfathered into the Blink Legacy pricing (which offered a one-time purchase). Please bring one-time purchases back!

The only way you know

Clean and simple interface for turning your iPad into a programming terminal. This is the only app that renders all NerdFonts correctly if you are trying to use something like LazyVim with all the bells and whistles. Supports things like Mosh, but I find that Tailscale + SSH and a terminal multiplexer like Tmux or Zellij are more than enough.