Portlight is made for reaching cloud servers (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure,
DigitalOcean, or anything that speaks SSH) from your phone. It's an SSH client
only: your tools, including the aws and gcloud CLIs and coding agents like
Claude Code, run on the servers you connect to.
Portlight isn't on the App Store, and there are no plans to publish it there
for now (that may change later). You build it yourself from this repository
and install it on your own devices. Start with GETTING_STARTED.md:
it covers everything from building to your first connection.
Heads-up: with a free Apple ID, iOS stops a self-built app opening after
7 days; press Run in Xcode again to renew it. A paid developer account
makes installs last a year.
Status: early and actively developed. The core SSH and crypto code is
well tested, but Portlight hasn't had an external security audit. Read
docs/SECURITY.md for what it protects and its limits.
Features
- A real terminal. xterm-256color, via SwiftTerm.
vim, tmux, htop and friends work. Portrait and landscape (forced from the
tab bar, even with rotation lock on), A−/A+ and pinch to zoom, fit 80
columns, seven themes.
- Speak to type. A strip under the terminal takes speech, in portrait or
landscape. It lands in a draft you can edit, then Insert types it without
pressing Return. Recognised on the phone; audio never leaves it.
- Saved commands.
git status, terraform plan and your own, one tap
away. Portlight refuses to save ones that contain a password or token.
- Keys the phone lacks. A scrolling bar above the keyboard has Esc,
sticky Ctrl and Alt (tap twice to lock), Tab, arrows that auto-repeat,
shell symbols, F1–F12 and saved commands.
- Tabs. Keep several sessions open. Each tab's screen survives switching
apps and locking.
- Keys, not passwords. Generate Ed25519 or ECDSA keys, or a Secure
Enclave key that can never leave the phone. Import existing OpenSSH or PEM
keys, including passphrase-protected ones.
- Jump hosts. Reach private instances through a bastion, like ProxyJump.
- Bring your setup. Import
~/.ssh/config and known_hosts. Quick
connect from user@host:port or a pasted ssh command.
- Cloud-aware details. Per-provider default usernames (
ec2-user,
ubuntu, azureuser…) and the right public-key line for each provider,
including GCP's username-as-comment format.
Screenshots
Security
Portlight always opens with Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode, and it
won't run on a phone without a passcode. Passwords and keys live in the
Keychain on this device only, and iOS itself withholds them until you
authenticate. Host keys are checked on every connection. Third-party
keyboards are blocked, terminal copies expire, and servers can't read your
clipboard. There are no accounts, analytics or tracking.
Details and limits are in docs/SECURITY.md. To report a
vulnerability, use Security → Report a vulnerability on GitHub rather
than a public issue.
Build it
You need a Mac with Xcode 26 or later, XcodeGen,
and an iPhone or iPad on iOS 17 or later. A free Apple ID is enough.
git clone https://github.com/AppachiTech/portlight-ios.git
cd portlight-ios
brew install xcodegen
make open # generates Portlight.xcodeproj and opens it
Set up signing first, then pick your iPhone and press Run. The full
walkthrough, including signing and the one-time Xcode prompts, is in
GETTING_STARTED.md.
Documentation
| Guide | For |
|---|
| GETTING_STARTED.md | Start here: build, install, connect your first server, keep it running |
| docs/BUILDING.md | Building, signing, running on your phone, troubleshooting |
| docs/INSTALL.md | Other ways to install, including signing a release build |
| docs/USING.md | Adding servers, keys, the terminal, voice input, saved commands |
| docs/SECURITY.md | What Portlight protects against, and its limits |
| docs/ARCHITECTURE.md | How the code fits together |
Layout
| Path | What's there |
|---|
PortlightCore/ | Swift package: everything except the UI. Builds and tests on Linux and macOS. |
PortlightCore/Sources/PortlightKit | Keys and key files, hosts, ~/.ssh/config import, known hosts, key encoding, themes, settings, the library store. |
PortlightCore/Sources/PortlightSSH | SSH connections on Apple's SwiftNIO SSH: shells, PTYs, jump hosts, sessions. |
App/Portlight | The SwiftUI app. |
project.yml | XcodeGen spec for the Xcode project. |
scripts/ | Icon, test fixtures, IPA and over-the-air install helpers. |
demo/server/ | A throwaway SSH server in Docker for trying Portlight and recording demos. |
docs/ | Building, installing, security, architecture, user guide. |
docs/assets/ | The icon, demo video and screenshots used in this README. |
Tests
make test # = cd PortlightCore && swift test
The tests cover key formats against real ssh-keygen and openssl output,
bcrypt-pbkdf against an independent implementation, config and known-hosts
parsing, and terminal key encoding. They also run end-to-end SSH against a
throwaway OpenSSH server on 127.0.0.1: every key type, host key checks,
PTY size and resize, Ctrl-C, jump hosts and session handling. Those
server tests run when sshd is installed, and are skipped otherwise.
Contributing
Bug reports, ideas and pull requests are welcome. See
CONTRIBUTING.md, and please follow the
Code of Conduct.
License
MIT. See LICENSE. Portlight builds on SwiftNIO SSH, SwiftNIO and
Swift Crypto (Apache 2.0, Apple) and SwiftTerm (MIT, Miguel de Icaza); the
full list is in THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.md.
