Portlight

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.