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All this power and you still can't run a terminal app in the background. iPad is a powerful computer crippled by a phone OS that doesn't let you do what most co

All this power and you still can't run a terminal app in the background. iPad is a powerful computer crippled by a phone OS that doesn't let you do what most computers were capable of doing even 30 years ago.

ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
Side note: yes, and no (apparently!) I am told if you use Stage Manager and you have the terminal app in the same stage as, say, your browser app or editor, it is not "in the background" as a process, even when it's occluded. Though it seems to me that as soon as a window is taken full screen, it's on a new stage. So you have to use them windowed? Or in Split View, which grants the same "both in the foreground" privileges. Which is as bizarre and arbirary as much of the rest of iPadOS. Which as you suggest, needs to stop feeling so much like a 1980s co-operative multitasking system. (Edit to add: I suppose it is not _ridiculous_ that multitasking is in some ways tied to visual presence: apps don't need to be quit, and that which is not on the screen is not running full time. Even if it does make it very difficult to use one for work. It's quite an iOS-ish thing, to make the relationship between what you can see and what is happening more concrete. The camera works this way after all.)
threeseed 2y ago
You can run a Terminal app in the background for 30s. And an app could support Background App Refresh to get around this.
- mort96 2y ago
  "The terminal gets killed after 30s in the background" and "you can't run a terminal app in the background" are functionally the same statement.
- ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
  I don't know. Termius doesn't do that does it? (Background App Refresh I mean) The workaround Termius apparently uses is absurd (and rather amusing): it adds location tracking it doesn't really need. Because apps that have location tracking enabled don't lose their connections: https://support.termius.com/hc/en-us/articles/900006226306-I-can-t-use-the-iOS-app-in-the-background https://support.termius.com/hc/en-us/articles/900006226306-I... This is a clever solution but it does have a Kafkaesque quality.
  - kalleboo 2y ago
    The "location tracking" thing is so absurd. Apps use the location tracking permission to stay active in the background. App Review says "why do you have this permission? you need to actually have a user-facing feature that justifies tracking the location to get it" so apps just add a pointless "my location history" feature that is not actually needed just to make App Review happy. At that point, just allow background refresh! Everyone is just working around the rule anyway, why does it even exist? The App Store is so dysfunctional.
    - threeseed 2y ago
      > Everyone is just working around the rule anyway, why does it even exist Because most developers are not working around the rule. And if you allowed every app to permanently background you would compromise the iPad experience.
      - Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago
        Is macbook experience compromised? They are essentially the same hardware now, and I didn't notice any issues with 'macbook experience'.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - neilalexander 2y ago
        Apple have full control over process scheduling so there is absolutely no reason that it should compromise the experience at all. They could notify the app it's about to go into the background so that resource-intensive tasks can be paused, then severely limit CPU shares to preserve battery life and then notify it again when it's about to hit the foreground. That would be enough just to keep application state in memory or socket connections alive.
    - ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
      Right -- that's what I meant by Kafakesque. Though it's a bit more Brazil than Kafka, I realised after I made a cup of tea.
- Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago
  No, you actually can't. iOS and iPad OS can run 'up to 30s in the background', and it is typical for an app to be terminated instantly once a user opens a home screen or another app. (we develop apps for iOS that need bg functionality)
miles 2y ago
Hey now! Did you miss the big news?! Apple Finally Plans to Release a Calculator App for iPad Later This Year https://www.macrumors.com/2024/04/23/calculator-app-for-ipad-rumor/ https://www.macrumors.com/2024/04/23/calculator-app-for-ipad...
Jtsummers 2y ago
I dealt with this by switching to mosh which made sense anyways since, when I did use an iPad + terminal a lot, I was traveling a lot and consequently changing networks regularly. Conveniently, this also survives rebooting the device and OS upgrades (minor only? I think it survived the last major OS update as well).
jwells89 2y ago
I think it’d be nice if the user could go into settings and opt apps into running in the background indefinitely (on iPhones too), but given how common it is for random junk to be sitting in the background sucking up CPU doing a lot of nothing on desktop OSes I don’t think that it should be something that apps can do out of the box, or even request permission for since too many users would absentmindedly grant permission to a bunch of apps and then wonder why their iPad only lasts 1h30m before running out of juice.
- Jtsummers 2y ago
  Add a second tray/location showing the still-running background applications (as opposed to the paused/killed ones that you can still switch to). Then the user can quickly see what's taking up resources and pause or kill it themselves, optionally moving applications between the unkillable and killable locations. No need to dive into per-app settings except maybe to determine the default behavior. You can do this dynamically based on which applications are running that you'd like to keep running (or not). They could even justifiably restrict this capability to the M-series iPads given the substantial performance improvements (including efficiency cores) compared to the older A-series iPads if they wanted to create motivation to upgrade.

ecjhdnc2025 2y ago

Side note: yes, and no (apparently!) I am told if you use Stage Manager and you have the terminal app in the same stage as, say, your browser app or editor, it is not "in the background" as a process, even when it's occluded. Though it seems to me that as soon as a window is taken full screen, it's on a new stage. So you have to use them windowed? Or in Split View, which grants the same "both in the foreground" privileges. Which is as bizarre and arbirary as much of the rest of iPadOS. Which as you suggest, needs to stop feeling so much like a 1980s co-operative multitasking system. (Edit to add: I suppose it is not _ridiculous_ that multitasking is in some ways tied to visual presence: apps don't need to be quit, and that which is not on the screen is not running full time. Even if it does make it very difficult to use one for work. It's quite an iOS-ish thing, to make the relationship between what you can see and what is happening more concrete. The camera works this way after all.)

threeseed 2y ago

You can run a Terminal app in the background for 30s. And an app could support Background App Refresh to get around this.

mort96 2y ago
"The terminal gets killed after 30s in the background" and "you can't run a terminal app in the background" are functionally the same statement.
ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
I don't know. Termius doesn't do that does it? (Background App Refresh I mean) The workaround Termius apparently uses is absurd (and rather amusing): it adds location tracking it doesn't really need. Because apps that have location tracking enabled don't lose their connections: https://support.termius.com/hc/en-us/articles/900006226306-I-can-t-use-the-iOS-app-in-the-background https://support.termius.com/hc/en-us/articles/900006226306-I... This is a clever solution but it does have a Kafkaesque quality.
- kalleboo 2y ago
  The "location tracking" thing is so absurd. Apps use the location tracking permission to stay active in the background. App Review says "why do you have this permission? you need to actually have a user-facing feature that justifies tracking the location to get it" so apps just add a pointless "my location history" feature that is not actually needed just to make App Review happy. At that point, just allow background refresh! Everyone is just working around the rule anyway, why does it even exist? The App Store is so dysfunctional.
  - threeseed 2y ago
    > Everyone is just working around the rule anyway, why does it even exist Because most developers are not working around the rule. And if you allowed every app to permanently background you would compromise the iPad experience.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago
      Is macbook experience compromised? They are essentially the same hardware now, and I didn't notice any issues with 'macbook experience'.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - neilalexander 2y ago
      Apple have full control over process scheduling so there is absolutely no reason that it should compromise the experience at all. They could notify the app it's about to go into the background so that resource-intensive tasks can be paused, then severely limit CPU shares to preserve battery life and then notify it again when it's about to hit the foreground. That would be enough just to keep application state in memory or socket connections alive.
  - ecjhdnc2025 2y ago
    Right -- that's what I meant by Kafakesque. Though it's a bit more Brazil than Kafka, I realised after I made a cup of tea.
Andrew_nenakhov 2y ago
No, you actually can't. iOS and iPad OS can run 'up to 30s in the background', and it is typical for an app to be terminated instantly once a user opens a home screen or another app. (we develop apps for iOS that need bg functionality)

miles 2y ago

Hey now! Did you miss the big news?! Apple Finally Plans to Release a Calculator App for iPad Later This Year https://www.macrumors.com/2024/04/23/calculator-app-for-ipad-rumor/ https://www.macrumors.com/2024/04/23/calculator-app-for-ipad...

Jtsummers 2y ago

I dealt with this by switching to mosh which made sense anyways since, when I did use an iPad + terminal a lot, I was traveling a lot and consequently changing networks regularly. Conveniently, this also survives rebooting the device and OS upgrades (minor only? I think it survived the last major OS update as well).

jwells89 2y ago

I think it’d be nice if the user could go into settings and opt apps into running in the background indefinitely (on iPhones too), but given how common it is for random junk to be sitting in the background sucking up CPU doing a lot of nothing on desktop OSes I don’t think that it should be something that apps can do out of the box, or even request permission for since too many users would absentmindedly grant permission to a bunch of apps and then wonder why their iPad only lasts 1h30m before running out of juice.

Jtsummers 2y ago
Add a second tray/location showing the still-running background applications (as opposed to the paused/killed ones that you can still switch to). Then the user can quickly see what's taking up resources and pause or kill it themselves, optionally moving applications between the unkillable and killable locations. No need to dive into per-app settings except maybe to determine the default behavior. You can do this dynamically based on which applications are running that you'd like to keep running (or not). They could even justifiably restrict this capability to the M-series iPads given the substantial performance improvements (including efficiency cores) compared to the older A-series iPads if they wanted to create motivation to upgrade.