HackerReposA FIELD GUIDE TO OPEN SOURCE
ProSponsor the shelf♧ 0
← Back to top all-time
blinksh
blink
Swift2016–2024
blinksh / blink

blink

Blink Mobile Shell for iOS (Mosh based)

24Distinct people
28Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
7KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

Blink Mobile Shell for iOS (Mosh based)

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 12:03:30 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year28 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2016-04-26 18:21:47 UTC to 2024-09-29 14:24:23 UTC.

02462016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments20162017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 1 submissions, 2 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 6 mentions; 0 submissions, 6 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 2 submissions, 3 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 1 submissions, 2 comments2024

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC312
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC606
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC523
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC312

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
Blink Shell for iOS Do Blink! Blink is the first professional, desktop-grade terminal for iOS that leverages the support of Mosh and SSH. Thus, we can unequivocally guarantee stable connections, lightning-fast speeds, and full configurations. It can and should be your all-day-long tool. We did not create another terminal to fix your website on the go. Blink was built as a professional grade product from the onset. We started by analyzing what the must-haves were and we ended up grounding Blink on these three concepts: Fast rendering: dmesg in your Unix server should be instantaneous. We can't wait even a second to render. We didn't need to reinvent the wheel to make this happen. We simply used Chromium's HTerm to ensure that rendering is perfect and fast, even with those special, tricky encodings. Always on: Mosh transcends SSH's variability. Mosh overcomes the unstable and intermittent connectivity that we all associate with mobile connections. You can check your Safari without fear of having to restart the SSH connection. You can flawlessly jump from home, to the train, and then the office thanks to Mosh. Blink is rock-solid connected all the way. Mosh is readily available and can be easily installed on your server. Go to https://mosh.org. Fully configurable: Blink embraces Bluetooth-coupled keyboards with gusto. Some like Caps as Esc on Vim, others Caps as Ctrl on Emacs. Blink champions them all. But there's more, because we want more. You can also add your own custom themes and fonts to Blink. During your always-on sessions, you're in your zone. But, Blink is much more. Please read on: You should command your terminal, not navigate it. Blink will jump you right into a friendly shell and it'll be clear to you how to roll. The interface is straightforward. We dumped all menus and went full screen for your terminal. Use swipe to move between your open connections, slide down to close them, and even pinch to zoom! Configure your Blink connections by adding your own Hosts and RSA Encryption keys. Everything will look familiar and you get to work, fast! We've incorporated SplitView, for those necessary Google searches and chats with coworkers. For more information, please visit Blink Shell. Additions: Blink also contains a set of shell utilities, so you can add / remove files, list them, etc. Specifically, the commands available (as of now) are: cd, setenv, ls, touch, cp, rm, ln, mv, mkdir, rmdir, df, du, chksum, chmod, chflags, chgrp, stat, readlink, compress, uncompress, gzip, gunzip, pwd, env, printenv, date, uname, id, groups, whoami, uptime cat, grep, wc curl (includes http, https, scp, sftp...), scp, sftp tar You can call commands individually, or use small scripts using python or lua. There is redirection (">", "<", "&>" ...), but no pipe. All these commands are inside the ios_system.framework (precompiled, for facility). If you want to edit the source (to add more commands), see: https://github.com/holzschu/ios_system. curl opens access to file transfers to and from your iPad (ftp, http, scp, sftp...). It uses the key management of BLINKSHELL (the keys you created with "config"). You can also specify keys with a path: curl scp://host.name.edu/filename -o filename --key $SHARED/id_rsa --pass MyPassword You can also use the scp and sftp commands: scp user@host.name.edu:filename . sftp localFilename user@host.name.edu:~/ scp and sftp are implemented through curl, by rewriting the arguments to follow the curl syntax. Pro: lighter implementation, smaller memory cost, less likely to have function name collisions. Con: some switches might not have exactly the same meaning. Environment variables In iOS, because of sandbox restrictions, you cannot write in the ~ directory, only in ~/Documents/, ~/Library/ and ~/tmp. Most Unix programs assume the configuration files are in $HOME. So either you redefine $HOME to ~/Documents/ or you set configuration variables (using setenv) to some other place. I do this in Blink, inside the MCPSession.m file. The following variables are defined: setenv PATH = $PATH:~/Library/bin:~/Documents/bin setenv PYTHONHOME = $HOME/Library/ setenv SSH_HOME = $HOME/Documents/ setenv CURL_HOME = $HOME/Documents/ setenv HGRCPATH = $HOME/Documents/.hgrc/ setenv SSL_CERT_FILE = $HOME/Documents/cacert.pem If you want to change them permanently, it's probably best to edit MCPSession.m. Obtaining Blink Blink is available now on the AppStore. Check it out! If you would like to participate on its development, we would love to have you on board! There are two ways to collaborate with the project: you can download and build Blink yourself, or you can request an invitation to help us test future versions (on the raw branch). If you want to participate on the testing, follow and tweet us @BlinkShell about your usage scenarios. Invitations will be sent out in waves, please be patient if you do not receive yours immediately. Bugs should be reported here on GitHub. If you have any questions or want to make sure we do not miss on an interesting feature, please send your suggestions to our Twitter account @BlinkShell. We would love to discuss them with you! Please do not use Twitter to report bugs. We can't wait to receive your valuable feedback. Enjoy! Build We made a ton easier to build and install Blink yourself on your iOS devices through XCode. We provide a precompiled package with all the libraries for the master branch. Here are the steps: Check xcode-select -p is pointing to Xcode.app (/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer) not command tools. Run the following command: git clone --recursive https://github.com/blinksh/blink.git && \ cd blink && ./get_frameworks.sh && ./get_resources.sh && \ rm -rf Blink.xcodeproj/project.xcworkspace/xcshareddata/ Change developer ids cp template_setup.xcconfig developer_setup.xcconfig edit developer_setup.xcconfig (change apple developer id etc). Open the project in XCode 3a. If you want to build with
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

6 sources
> Highly recommend it even with its steep price of $20 It's GPL3 [1], so you are welcome to compile and install on your own personal devices even if you do not have a paid Apple development subscription, though I'm pretty sure that this would require periodic compile/install cycles (every couple of weeks?). [1] https://github.com/blinksh/blink
In iPadOS
If you're looking for a polished mobile SSH client without a subscription model, you might be interested in Blink[1]. It's worth mentioning that in addition to SSH, it also supports Mosh[2] (it's the official iOS client!), a remote access protocol tailored to handle spotty mobile connections. It's also open source[3] and gives you access to several Unix commands offline. [1] https://www.blink.sh/ [2] https://mosh.org [3] https://github.com/blinksh/blink
In Launch HN: Termius (YC W19) – SSH client that works on desktop and mobile
For an open source ssh client there is the "Blink Shell", which can be purchased from the App store -or- you can build it yourself from source. I am unsure if the developers directly get any money when you purchase it from the app store, but they do mention the paid app with the source here <https://github.com/blinksh/blink>. It isn't often that I find myself needing to use an iPad/iPhone with SSH, but I've used WebSSH (perhaps no longer under active development) and Coda in the past. I have not done any real research for open source password managers. But a quick search did find <https://opensource.com/article/16/12/password-managers> which lists at least one. Personally I am very happy and frequent user of 1Password (by Agile Bits) across various devices.
In Notarizing Your App Before Distribution
Blink (mentioned in the post) is a fantastic app. It's open source [1], or you can buy it from the App Store. Not mentioned in the post, Blink can do port forwarding with the usual ssh tool (ssh -L 5000:localhost:5000 myhost.com). It also provides a shell-like mode of interaction with the local file system and iCloud, so you can `scp` files around between the iPad and your server. [1]: https://github.com/blinksh/blink
In Coding on an iPad Pro in 2019

MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME

A few shortcuts

/
Search the collection
?
Open this guide
Esc
Close dialogs and navigation

Your saved repositories and interests stay in this browser.