An iPad terminal for power users — now on iPhone too.
SSH, mosh, tmux — without the legacy.
Most iPad terminals are afterthoughts. Tessera treats the keyboard as the primary input, the network as untrustworthy, and the screen as a session — not a window. Built for people who already live in a terminal. It connects directly to machines you own — no middleman, no account, no tracking.
Free to download with every feature included; the free app remembers one saved host, and a single $9.99 purchase unlocks unlimited saved hosts. No subscription, no telemetry, no rented credentials. Free software under GPL-3.0; the full source is on GitHub. Requires iOS/iPadOS 17 or later, on iPhone and iPad — and Apple silicon Macs too.
Save the machines you live on; quick-connect to the ones you don't. Local port forwarding reaches the services hiding behind them, and session restore brings your hosts and layout back after a relaunch.
Open a session over SSH. Toggle a host to use mosh and it survives the cafe wifi, the lift, the train tunnel — a per-host setting, so you decide where it helps. And unlike any other mosh client on iOS, scrollback survives too: real history you can scroll, search, and select.
Tessera auto-attaches to a tmux session on connect, so a dropped connection never loses your work: native window and pane support when you want it, raw passthrough when you don't.
Generate Ed25519 keys in the iOS Keychain, or device-bound P-256 keys inside the Secure Enclave — those never leave it, and can require Face ID to use. App lock guards launch, return, and idle with Face ID or a passcode.
Verified, stale, or changed — at a glance. When a host key rotates, Tessera shows the old and new fingerprint side by side, so you can accept (or refuse) on purpose.
Move files and images into and out of your hosts with native iOS sharing. Paste a path straight into the active terminal — or select one in the terminal and right-click to quick-view the file behind it.
A centralized view of your Claude Code and Codex sessions across hosts, tmux windows, and panes — see what every agent is up to without cycling through terminals. Experimental, and off until you switch it on.
Hand off a live session between iPhone and iPad from the App Switcher or Dock. A tmux-backed session continues on the very same screen — only a pointer moves between devices, never a password or a private key. And the device that lost the grid says so, plainly, with take-back one tap away.
Point a new iPhone or iPad at your old one and Tessera copies your setup directly over the local network — no account, no cloud, no relay. The sending device lists every host, field, and key grant before anything moves; both screens compare a fresh six-digit code, then Face ID approves the batch.
Passwords and private keys never move. The new device generates its own key, and the old one installs it over the access it already has.
3.0 makes Tessera universal — one app, one purchase, iPhone and iPad. The phone is the companion surface: glance at a build, answer an agent, fire off a quick command. Attaching from the phone never reflows the layout your bigger screen built — you get one pane at a time, full-screen.
Sticky modifiers on the keyboard bar and a corner swipe pad keep shell keys under your thumb; a hardware keyboard gets the full shortcut set.
Hardware keyboard first — shortcuts, a hold-⌘ key legend, modifiers that behave. A configurable swipe pad puts arrows, Esc, and Ctrl on glass. Mouse and trackpad with scrolling that works.
Search the scrollback, pick a theme or your own background picture, and dictate on device. Natural editing, smooth scrolling — small comforts that make a terminal somewhere you want to live.
Tessera is free on the App Store with every feature included — there is no subscription and no trial timer. The free app limits you to one saved host; a single $9.99 in-app purchase lifts that limit permanently. Nothing else is paywalled: tmux, mosh, port forwarding, keys, the agent center and Handoff all work in the free app.
Yes. Tessera is licensed under GPL-3.0 and the source is published at github.com/bambouville/tessera. The build on the App Store is the same program, so you can read exactly what runs on your device.
No. There is no account, no sign-in and no server run by bambouville anywhere in the path. Tessera connects straight from your device to hosts you own or control. It collects no analytics, no tracking and no telemetry.
Yes, through native tmux control mode. Tessera speaks tmux's control protocol rather than drawing its output as text, so tmux windows become real tabs and tmux panes become real split views. It can auto-attach to a session when you connect, so a dropped connection never loses your work.
Yes. Mosh keeps a session alive across Wi-Fi to cellular roaming and across sleep and wake, and Tessera gives mosh sessions real, searchable scrollback — which plain mosh does not have.
Use mosh for the transport and tmux for process lifetime. Mosh survives the network changing underneath you and the device sleeping; tmux keeps the work running on the server even when the app is suspended or killed. Tessera can auto-attach to your tmux session on connect, so reopening the app puts you back where you were.
In the iOS Keychain. Keys can be generated on device or imported, and can be protected with Face ID or Touch ID. Private keys are never uploaded anywhere, because there is nowhere to upload them to — Tessera has no backend.
Yes. The agent center gathers Claude Code and Codex sessions from across every connection — tmux windows, panes and raw sessions — into one page, groups them by whether they need input, and lets you answer a waiting prompt without hunting for the right pane. It is experimental and off by default; enable it in settings → experimental → agent center.
Yes, it is a universal app. You can hand a live session off between iPad and iPhone: the session keeps running either way, and your focused session appears in the App Switcher and Dock on your other devices.