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I think WebRTC is better than SSH-ing for connecting to Mac terminal from iPhone
- Sayuj01 7mo agoI wanted a way to access my mac terminal from my iphone without setting up any vpn or weird router rules and then buying a separate ssh app in app store. So I built macky.dev as a fun side project. When the mac app is running it makes an outbound connection to my signaling server and registers itself under the account. iPhone also connects to this same signaling server to request a connection to this mac. Once both the host and remote are verified it establishes a direct p2p webrtc connection.
- drum55 7mo agoWhat portion of the security-critical code is written by a human? A shell is literally keys to the kingdom in every regard.
- yoavm 7mo agoIf you're using tmux, you can try my plugin https://github.com/bjesus/muxile https://github.com/bjesus/muxile . It sends your tmux session to your phone, with quick QR code scanning and WebSockets.
- ronsor 7mo agoThe pricing is extremely steep for a tech-savvy audience that could just set up Tailscale or MOSH.
- RIMR 7mo agoEspecially for a tool that only work on macOS and iPhone, and only serves one purpose. Pretty much every developer out there has some kind of tooling that does this already, that also does more. This is a cool little project, but I cannot imagine paying for it.
- snowhale 7mo ago[dead]
- frizlab 7mo agoIn the company where my father works some HTTPS services are blocked too…
- ronsor 7mo agoHonestly, at that point I'd just run SSH over WebSockets with websocat. WebRTC only adds extra complexity. Tailscale DERP relay servers also run over port 80/443 anyway.
- jodrellblank 7mo ago> "pure HTTPS port 443 -- you literally can't block it without breaking the web." Sure you can, you do Man In The Middle certificate inspection and then filter it aggressively like it was HTTP; that's the product companies like ZScaler offer, and basically any business/enterprise firewall device - internet filtering to protect your company and prevent or detect data exfiltration and malicious activity. Or perhaps you could say that does 'break the web' but companies do it anyway and pay a lot of money so they can do it. (ZScaler is a $23Bn market cap company).
- artpar 7mo agoHere is an implementation you might like https://github.com/artpar/terminal-tunnel https://github.com/artpar/terminal-tunnel P2P with webrtc (pion ftw) with e2ee client side is webui so you can use on any device ps: the default Cloudflare Worker from my account is already maxed out so you will need your own exchange (self host on your account)
- foxmoss 7mo agoLooking at their website it seems they're trying to target a slightly less tech savvy audience which are interested in checking on agents while away. Someone willing to blow cash on overpriced AI subscriptions, I could see justifying blowing money on this.
- bergie 7mo agoReticulum shell is also an option, and would also work over LoRa https://pypi.org/project/rnsh/ https://pypi.org/project/rnsh/
- tty456 7mo agoHow do you do data transfer with only blind signaling when either user is behind a NAT?
- rubyn00bie 7mo agoI’m not sure I get why this is better. Something like Tailscale makes it trivial to connect to your own machines and is likely more secure than this will be. Tailscale even has a free plan these days. Combine that with something like this that was shared on HN a few days ago: https://replay.software/updates/introducing-echo https://replay.software/updates/introducing-echo Then you’re all in for like $3. What about webRTC makes this better?
- spzb 7mo agoWhat guarantee is there that the connection is not being MitM? Closed source app from an unknown developer versus OpenSSH is a no-brainer to me.
- pelzatessa 7mo agoIn no serious case have I ever considered connecting to my PC terminal using phone. Connecting from PC to phone makes sense, but when talking the opposite situation, phones simply are terrible at doing things from terminal. Keyboard takes roughly 40% of the screen, and displaying wide lines is awkward. Forget about TUI applications, Midnight Commander and such. Other than toying around and extreme emergencies, why?
- xeornet 7mo agoConveniently running Claude Code while sitting on the toilet?
- frizlab 7mo agoHello, hemorrhoids!
- LoganDark 7mo agoIt's better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it (emergencies come to mind, as you've noted).
- lynndotpy 7mo agoDo you have an Android or an iPhone? IMO terminals are still the fastest way to do a lot of things on a phone, but it's a much better experience on Androids with keyboards for the purpose. And even on an iPhone, it's just fine. Python works really well as a shell for quick calculations, and you can use a script with the -i flag to make it more accessible.
- QuantumNomad_ 7mo agoI use ssh from my phone to my computer to run yt-dlp on YouTube videos that I want to save. And I regularly ssh into my servers from my phone to run some small routine tasks. Both these kinds of tasks involve extremely minimal amounts of typing, and little to no reading of output. So the small keyboard of the phone is not annoying, and neither is having a small screen.
- devmor 7mo ago
- notRobot 7mo agoShell In A Box has been a thing for like two decades now, and gives you a simple web-based interface ssh interface you can use from any device. https://github.com/shellinabox/shellinabox https://github.com/shellinabox/shellinabox
- gnabgib 7mo agoTitle: Connect to Mac Terminal from iPhone
- thisislife2 7mo agoYeah. I wonder why HN has become lax about enforcing the original title rule? I can understand editing the title to meet the character limit or remove hyperbole or make it less click-baity. But some changes really don't make sense - a recent HN Post ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47111039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47111039 ) was titled "The AI apocalypse for enshitification has started", where as the original title is "Large US company came after me for releasing a free open source self-hostable alternative!" - I am sure the original title would have got it more attention here.
- starkparker 7mo agoPreviously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47122939 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47122939 (yesterday, 3 points, 4 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47103613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47103613 (Sunday, 1 point, 0 comments)
- Sayuj01 7mo agoLol i thought no one would look at my project so just closed and went to watch some Kill Tony and I come back and like wtf, people are debating!
- badgersnake 7mo agoNo, use wireguard or ssh or both.
- messh 7mo agoOr... use something like https://shellbox.dev https://shellbox.dev
- aitchnyu 7mo agoIs this profitable? Can imagine it competing with programming tools like Replit, Val town, Openclaw; acting as server for occasionally syncing tools like Bitwarden, Obsidian; webhook receiving tools; VPSes etc.
- imwillofficial 7mo agoIts a very handsome website.
- rcarmo 7mo agoWhy stop at just one terminal? (shameless plug for https://github.com/rcarmo/webterm https://github.com/rcarmo/webterm, which works pretty well on mobile)
- umairnadeem123 7mo ago[dead]
- swongel 7mo agoRegardless of the poor security guarentees and or personal disinterest in such a service. I don't think services which offer continuous services should ever have a "lifetime" price. With a lifetime subscription the incentive of the company is to offer poor service, or to stop alltogether when revenue from growth is no longer outpacing operating costs. I'd much prefer it if the $29/lifetime would just be $29 / 4 years instead, it would make me much more secure in onboarding onto your proprietary service as I would feel more secure about it's future existence.
- dijit 7mo agosure, but I fucking hate subscriptions. If you want to sell software, fine, but I want to buy it then. Release a v2? Sure, I’ll probably buy again. I have bought 4 versions of littlesnitch and 3 versions of prompt (5 if you count the macos versions too). But if I see another subscription I’m just clicking off.
- ozim 7mo agoFor personal stuff yeah I hate subscriptions. For company stuff I love subscriptions, I don’t have to ask bean counters for money each time there is a new version, they just approve monthly payments and we are done.
- mrsssnake 7mo agoFor connecting two devices I already pay for a service allowing that, it's called ISP (Internet Service Provider).
- _grilled_cheese 7mo agoYou are connecting to the Mac shell, not the Mac terminal. The remote app running on the iPhone is the terminal.
- spzb 7mo agoI had a play with it using mitmproxy and one thing is for sure, it doesn't implement certificate pinning. It happily connected to my self-signed certificate. When you set a master password for access to your Mac it's sent to their server (a Cloudflare Worker) as plaintext (albeit over TLS) rather than using it as input to a key derivation function. That makes me think it's probably stored server-side with little to no security. All in all, there ain't a bargepole long enough for me to touch this with.
- ay 7mo agoJust use iSH and use the local terminal on the iPhone from which you can connect to the Mac terminal. Works well over tailscale, too.
- EGreg 7mo agoOr … just run clawdbot. Just kidding
- monster_truck 7mo agoWhat is with all the insanely insecure projects and services making it to the FP today? Nobody should be using this. It is not at all safe and should absolutely not be on the FP.
- spzb 7mo agoPfft, security is so last year. We're all about the vibes now. Get on the AI train or be left behind, dinosaur. /s
- monster_truck 7mo agoIn all seriousness I'm 50B tokens deep, it's more that I'm disappointed they haven't caught up to me. Or you know, thought to ask it about security.
- hmokiguess 7mo agoI use https://github.com/tiann/hapi https://github.com/tiann/hapi self hosted with Tailscale, took seconds to setup, it's free, and it has more features.
- Spooky23 7mo agoJust use ish and standard ssh or tailscale+ssh!
- Sean-Der 7mo agoWebRTC is a real super power on this stuff :) I also love seeing it used for 'kill the jump box' and file transfer. Just drives me crazy that we lets files sit on file providers. Especially if you are transferring in the office! Send it right over the LAN and could be instant. Being forced to upload + download from remote servers frustrates me.
- redbell 7mo agoIMO, the title is a little bit misleading. Since it started with I think, I was expecting to read a blog post but landed on a software product instead!
- mihneadevries 7mo agoThe NAT traversal angle is honestly the most compelling part here, WebRTC's ICE/STUN/TURN stack handles weird network topologies pretty gracefully without you having to think about it. That said I think spzb's point is real, the signaling server is still a trust boundary even if the p2p channel itself is encrypted. Tailscale sidesteps a lot of that by having a more battle-tested auth model tbh. On the "why would you even want this on phone" thing though, I guess I disagree a bit, I've been building something related: Xtro, terminal + source control + AI agent on iPhone connected to Mac, and like the use case is surprisingly legit once the layout is actually designed for mobile. Emergency deploys, quick fixes, that kind of thing.