I wanted a way to access my mac terminal from my iphone without setting up any vpn or weird router rules and then buying a separate ssh app in app store. So I built macky.dev as a fun side project.
When the mac app is running it makes an outbound connection to my signaling server and registers itself under the account. iPhone also connects to this same signaling server to request a connection to this mac. Once both the host and remote are verified it establishes a direct p2p webrtc connection.
If you're using tmux, you can try my plugin https://github.com/bjesus/muxile . It sends your tmux session to your phone, with quick QR code scanning and WebSockets.
Looking at their website it seems they're trying to target a slightly less tech savvy audience which are interested in checking on agents while away. Someone willing to blow cash on overpriced AI subscriptions, I could see justifying blowing money on this.
I’m not sure I get why this is better. Something like Tailscale makes it trivial to connect to your own machines and is likely more secure than this will be. Tailscale even has a free plan these days. Combine that with something like this that was shared on HN a few days ago: https://replay.software/updates/introducing-echo
Then you’re all in for like $3. What about webRTC makes this better?
In no serious case have I ever considered connecting to my PC terminal using phone. Connecting from PC to phone makes sense, but when talking the opposite situation, phones simply are terrible at doing things from terminal. Keyboard takes roughly 40% of the screen, and displaying wide lines is awkward. Forget about TUI applications, Midnight Commander and such. Other than toying around and extreme emergencies, why?
IMO terminals are still the fastest way to do a lot of things on a phone, but it's a much better experience on Androids with keyboards for the purpose.
And even on an iPhone, it's just fine. Python works really well as a shell for quick calculations, and you can use a script with the -i flag to make it more accessible.
I use ssh from my phone to my computer to run yt-dlp on YouTube videos that I want to save.
And I regularly ssh into my servers from my phone to run some small routine tasks.
Both these kinds of tasks involve extremely minimal amounts of typing, and little to no reading of output. So the small keyboard of the phone is not annoying, and neither is having a small screen.
The keyboard is the biggest problem. I actually did a lot of terminal management from my old Blackberry, and later the Samsung Moment (early Android phone with a slide-out physical keyboard).
Phone to PC VNC is my only way to start/stop a YouTube live stream remotely. I don't mean using the phone's webcam, rather there's a camera always sitting elsewhere. YouTube's app and mobile site are both missing that button. I would love to not need to do this.
I do rust dev (nvim) and other ssh/terminal tasks on my Android phone. I get 82 rows and 118 columns, so not too worried about long lines. Mostly for something to do during my commute or when I want to do some coding without having to carry a laptop around.
My brother was having an issue with some of his servers and I was able to connect from an airplane in the middle of the night somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. Crazy time to be alive :)
Shell In A Box has been a thing for like two decades now, and gives you a simple web-based interface ssh interface you can use from any device. https://github.com/shellinabox/shellinabox
Yeah. I wonder why HN has become lax about enforcing the original title rule? I can understand editing the title to meet the character limit or remove hyperbole or make it less click-baity. But some changes really don't make sense - a recent HN Post ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47111039 ) was titled "The AI apocalypse for enshitification has started", where as the original title is "Large US company came after me for releasing a free open source self-hostable alternative!" - I am sure the original title would have got it more attention here.
Is this profitable? Can imagine it competing with programming tools like Replit, Val town, Openclaw; acting as server for occasionally syncing tools like Bitwarden, Obsidian; webhook receiving tools; VPSes etc.
Regardless of the poor security guarentees and or personal disinterest in such a service. I don't think services which offer continuous services should ever have a "lifetime" price. With a lifetime subscription the incentive of the company is to offer poor service, or to stop alltogether when revenue from growth is no longer outpacing operating costs. I'd much prefer it if the $29/lifetime would just be $29 / 4 years instead, it would make me much more secure in onboarding onto your proprietary service as I would feel more secure about it's future existence.
For company stuff I love subscriptions, I don’t have to ask bean counters for money each time there is a new version, they just approve monthly payments and we are done.
I had a play with it using mitmproxy and one thing is for sure, it doesn't implement certificate pinning. It happily connected to my self-signed certificate. When you set a master password for access to your Mac it's sent to their server (a Cloudflare Worker) as plaintext (albeit over TLS) rather than using it as input to a key derivation function. That makes me think it's probably stored server-side with little to no security. All in all, there ain't a bargepole long enough for me to touch this with.
I also love seeing it used for 'kill the jump box' and file transfer. Just drives me crazy that we lets files sit on file providers.
Especially if you are transferring in the office! Send it right over the LAN and could be instant. Being forced to upload + download from remote servers frustrates me.
IMO, the title is a little bit misleading. Since it started with I think, I was expecting to read a blog post but landed on a software product instead!
The NAT traversal angle is honestly the most compelling part here, WebRTC's ICE/STUN/TURN stack handles weird network topologies pretty gracefully without you having to think about it.
That said I think spzb's point is real, the signaling server is still a trust boundary even if the p2p channel itself is encrypted. Tailscale sidesteps a lot of that by having a more battle-tested auth model tbh.
On the "why would you even want this on phone" thing though, I guess I disagree a bit, I've been building something related: Xtro, terminal + source control + AI agent on iPhone connected to Mac, and like the use case is surprisingly legit once the layout is actually designed for mobile. Emergency deploys, quick fixes, that kind of thing.
[OP] Sayuj01 | a day ago
When the mac app is running it makes an outbound connection to my signaling server and registers itself under the account. iPhone also connects to this same signaling server to request a connection to this mac. Once both the host and remote are verified it establishes a direct p2p webrtc connection.
drum55 | a day ago
yoavm | a day ago
ronsor | a day ago
RIMR | a day ago
Pretty much every developer out there has some kind of tooling that does this already, that also does more.
This is a cool little project, but I cannot imagine paying for it.
artpar | a day ago
https://github.com/artpar/terminal-tunnel
P2P with webrtc (pion ftw) with e2ee
client side is webui so you can use on any device
ps: the default Cloudflare Worker from my account is already maxed out so you will need your own exchange (self host on your account)
foxmoss | a day ago
bergie | a day ago
https://pypi.org/project/rnsh/
tty456 | a day ago
rubyn00bie | a day ago
Then you’re all in for like $3. What about webRTC makes this better?
spzb | a day ago
pelzatessa | a day ago
xeornet | a day ago
frizlab | a day ago
LoganDark | a day ago
lynndotpy | a day ago
IMO terminals are still the fastest way to do a lot of things on a phone, but it's a much better experience on Androids with keyboards for the purpose.
And even on an iPhone, it's just fine. Python works really well as a shell for quick calculations, and you can use a script with the -i flag to make it more accessible.
QuantumNomad_ | a day ago
And I regularly ssh into my servers from my phone to run some small routine tasks.
Both these kinds of tasks involve extremely minimal amounts of typing, and little to no reading of output. So the small keyboard of the phone is not annoying, and neither is having a small screen.
devmor | a day ago
zadikian | a day ago
overhead4075 | a day ago
Spooky23 | 23 hours ago
My brother was having an issue with some of his servers and I was able to connect from an airplane in the middle of the night somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. Crazy time to be alive :)
notRobot | a day ago
gnabgib | a day ago
thisislife2 | a day ago
starkparker | a day ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47122939 (yesterday, 3 points, 4 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47103613 (Sunday, 1 point, 0 comments)
[OP] Sayuj01 | a day ago
badgersnake | a day ago
messh | a day ago
aitchnyu | 7 hours ago
imwillofficial | a day ago
rcarmo | a day ago
swongel | a day ago
dijit | a day ago
If you want to sell software, fine, but I want to buy it then.
Release a v2? Sure, I’ll probably buy again.
I have bought 4 versions of littlesnitch and 3 versions of prompt (5 if you count the macos versions too).
But if I see another subscription I’m just clicking off.
ozim | a day ago
For company stuff I love subscriptions, I don’t have to ask bean counters for money each time there is a new version, they just approve monthly payments and we are done.
mrsssnake | a day ago
_grilled_cheese | a day ago
spzb | a day ago
[OP] Sayuj01 | 16 hours ago
spzb | 12 hours ago
ay | a day ago
EGreg | a day ago
EGreg | a day ago
Just kidding
monster_truck | a day ago
It is not at all safe and should absolutely not be on the FP.
spzb | a day ago
/s
monster_truck | 12 hours ago
hmokiguess | a day ago
Spooky23 | 23 hours ago
Sean-Der | 22 hours ago
I also love seeing it used for 'kill the jump box' and file transfer. Just drives me crazy that we lets files sit on file providers.
Especially if you are transferring in the office! Send it right over the LAN and could be instant. Being forced to upload + download from remote servers frustrates me.
redbell | 14 hours ago
mihneadevries | 10 hours ago
That said I think spzb's point is real, the signaling server is still a trust boundary even if the p2p channel itself is encrypted. Tailscale sidesteps a lot of that by having a more battle-tested auth model tbh.
On the "why would you even want this on phone" thing though, I guess I disagree a bit, I've been building something related: Xtro, terminal + source control + AI agent on iPhone connected to Mac, and like the use case is surprisingly legit once the layout is actually designed for mobile. Emergency deploys, quick fixes, that kind of thing.