I was recently using my Moshi iOS app to connect to herdr on my remote server a bit too much, that I started to feel the pain of disconnecting ssh sessions every time I switched away from the app. It turned out that the mosh server is designed for staying connected, and it is a straightforward brew install mosh away. However, Moshi decided to charge over $100 for a lifetime Pro license for connecting to mosh servers; so I hunted for its alternatives.
I discovered Rootshell, an open-source iOS app written in Swift. It is full-featured and pleasant to use, and connects to mosh servers for free. There is a bug that I hope can be fixed at a later time: touch does not immediately translate to mouse events in herdr, so when I touch the herdr interface, it doesn’t respond immediately (unlike Moshi). The workaround I found is to touch for around 0.3 seconds — sort of like a force touch a decade ago — and it worked.
The feature I enjoyed immediately was its “text entry” feature, where I can type with autocorrection enabled, and use the built-in iOS feature to dictate my prompt. Dictation in iOS turned out to be far from perfect, but my agent can easily understand everything I said. This saved quite a bit of time typing and reduced the mental friction, especially on the go.