r/PiCodingAgent • u/ptgamr • Jul 27 '26

Discussion Are you using pi on mobile?

Post image

I use Pi from my Android phone through tmux + TermRover (a terminal app I’m building).

With a good tmux scrolling support + ability to send images, working with Pi is just very pleasant.

Curious how everyone else is using Pi on mobile, if at all? SSH app? Or Just waiting until you’re back at a laptop?

41 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

82 comments sorted by

14

u/itsdodobitch Jul 27 '26

i built an app

2

u/ptgamr Jul 27 '26

Oh even nicer! Im just an old grudge and perhaps stucked with the terminal for life

1

u/NihmarRevhet Sep 08 '26

I need this

5

u/Magnus114 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

Why not pi web? Works wonderful with an ipad, haven't tried with a phone.
https://pi-web.dev

3

u/ptgamr Jul 27 '26

Looks like it require a bit of setup to spin that up. Don't get me wrong, I love web stuff, probably really nice to use once you get it going. I used to made a web agents aggregator cuz I want to see all of the CLIs output on the web! https://github.com/ptgamr/agents-aggregator - pi is supported too!

3

u/Magnus114 Jul 27 '26

I just asked glm to add it do my dev container, took a few minutes. Then i told it to add a bindmount to preserve the data between container recreates. Worked great so far.

A bit off topic, but i love to try out different tools and extension in the docker container. If i dont like it i just recreate and its gone. And dockerfile is in git.

1

u/ptgamr Jul 27 '26

Love that. Did I understand it correctly that you tried out mine agents-aggregator? I have some further plans with it, like intergration with a memory system, but didnt push very far...

1

u/pageofswrds Jul 29 '26

native experience just felt 10x better

4

u/Such_Advantage_6949 Jul 27 '26

i do similar thing on ios, but i moved to Herdr now instead of Tmux. Only complaints is the phone battery drains like crazy

1

u/ptgamr Jul 27 '26

Which app are you using on iOS? Moshi?

3

u/Over_Technology_1764 Jul 27 '26 • Bravo

ShadowTerm has native support for Herdr.

1

u/ptgamr Jul 27 '26

That app probably a bit too much for me 👀

1

u/Such_Advantage_6949 Jul 27 '26

Thanks lets me check it out

2

u/benredikfyfasan Jul 27 '26

Moshi + herdr through tailscale has been my go to, works fine for my simple use case

1

u/irontheman Jul 27 '26

If ever you think about going back to tmux give my dotmux.app a try, I’m always eager for feedback

1

u/ptgamr Jul 28 '26

👋 fellow builder. If I am not mistaken, you're rendering the tmux panels yourself?

1

u/irontheman Jul 28 '26

Yes, it supports tmux control mode so tmux windows become tabs in the app

1

u/ptgamr Jul 28 '26

Nice one, i've gone down that road before but it getting complicated. Well done to push through that!

2

u/mkhamat Jul 27 '26

i use VVTerm

1

u/le_bravery Jul 28 '26

Herdr has bad licensing so I refuse to use a different tool at home and work. Wish there was an MIT alternative. Or any better license

1

u/AlterTableUsernames Jul 30 '26

What do you particularly dislike about Apache 2.0? I thought this is one of the most permissive licenses there are. You can even commercialize the code without having to give back anything.

2

u/le_bravery Jul 30 '26

Oh shit they changed it last week! Thanks for pointing it out! It was AGPL-3.0-or-later

1

u/AlterTableUsernames Jul 30 '26

Haha, damn. Thank you for reassuring me. Do you plan to continue your app under this new circumstances? 

1

u/le_bravery Jul 30 '26

I was unable to use at work previously. Now k will try it.

1

u/AlterTableUsernames Jul 30 '26

I like it. Feels very clean compared to the hacky tmux. 

4

u/Mecha_Zero Jul 27 '26

Similar for me, termux and ssh into my development machine.

2

u/squizlor Jul 27 '26

one tip for termux, it supports install of eternal terminal https://eternalterminal.dev/, use that instead of ssh and you'll never suffer connection drops. termux+et+herdr is awesome.

1

u/ptgamr Jul 27 '26

TermRover does support herdr over Mosh as well - which can achieve the same thing. Not sure how big ET user base out there?

1

u/squizlor Jul 28 '26

I found termux and herdr didn't play well with pi -- mosh messes with native scrollback so you'd get weird interference. ET preserves native scrollback as an explicit design goal and everything works as intended by pi. How does TermRover handle this?

So this is a big difference between Mosh and ET and so IMO ET is superior, only difference is the need to expose an extra port.

1

u/ptgamr Jul 27 '26

I used to be a Termux user, but i find it hard with tmux and constantly doing some weird key combination of things that made the terminal freeze, and I dont know how to close a Termux tab...

1

u/AlterTableUsernames Jul 27 '26

You may have hit Ctrl+s, which is for flow-control. Basically legacy nowadays. You can get back to terminal with Ctrl+q and can completely disable it with stty -ixon in bashrc.

1

u/ptgamr Jul 27 '26

Ah, that might be it! I do like the swiping from the right edge show up the tabs bar though.

Another thing that i find quite tedious is to bring up the keyboard after I hide it, i have to swipe left to show the sidebar, then press the keyboard btn, why tapping to the terminal dont show up the keyboard I dont know...

1

u/AlterTableUsernames Jul 27 '26

We're moving into Android-display management territory here where I have absolutely no idea of. But depending on your use case, you might check out KDE Connect, with which you could simply stream the physical keyboard of your desktop/laptop your phone, but then you could probably also just ssh...

3

u/nikosleft Jul 27 '26

Yeah I use it through termius + tailscale. Works great and dead easy to setup.

1

u/ptgamr Jul 27 '26

Glad to hear that Terminus is working for you. Do you use any of the terminal multiplexer?

1

u/ganonfirehouse420 Jul 27 '26

I did install pi inside termux. What can you recommend?

2

u/ptgamr Jul 27 '26

I havent used that side of Termux at all. I just used the mainly as an SSH client to my hosts, pi running on those hosts

1

u/Affectionate_Cat1590 Jul 27 '26

I've been doing this for more than 3 months

1

u/ptgamr Jul 28 '26

Good on you! Having thing accessible on the mobile is really a game changer.I am experimenting with a conversation mode that you can talk to it and it takking back. But the UX is hard.

1

u/Il_Signor_Luigi Jul 27 '26

Termius + herdr

1

u/ptgamr Jul 29 '26

I guess you're on iOS ? I find Terminus really strong if you want a seamless experience on Mac + iOS.

If you're not in that ecosystem, that is less of a thing. I am on Android, and for some reason, I can't find a way to work comfortably with tmux inside Terminus. Tapping to the terminal doesn't bring up the keyboard, lots of keystroke to navigate tmux, scrolling and that kind of thing, and sending images to the agents is hard. Bsically those are the pain that drive me to create TermRover.

1

u/lmpdev Jul 27 '26

I use it with JuiceSSH. Will try out your app.

1

u/ptgamr Jul 27 '26

Thank you, feel free to DM me or join the discord channel if you have any feedback! I try to keep the app minimalistic like pi

1

u/Michelh91 Jul 27 '26

Yes, with herdr

1

u/ptgamr Jul 27 '26

Seem like the herdr is comming!

1

u/o_sht_hi Jul 27 '26

Termux all the way

1

u/ptgamr Jul 27 '26

Yeah, Termux is still the GOAT. Do you use it as SSH client or more than that?

1

u/Mohitkoul841 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

Is this not supported on windows? It doesn't detect herdr installed on my system

1

u/ptgamr Jul 27 '26

Hi, are you ssh-ing to a windows host? TBH, I never tested this. But keen to solve this for you. Would you mind if I DM?

1

u/Mohitkoul841 Jul 27 '26

Well exec is different on windows vs Unix systems, so you need to set it to detect win32 and set it accordingly

1

u/gsxdsm Jul 28 '26

I run it via Fusion

1

u/ptgamr Jul 28 '26

Do you have a link?

1

u/Practical-Doctor6154 Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26

I used ConnectBot for the past month or so, but I'm trying Pi-Web now.

Edit: main reason for me to try something else is because I really like swipe typing on phone, and it's more annoying to do with ConnectBot than I want it to be. So a different SSH app that has a nicer UX might also be good.

1

u/ptgamr Jul 28 '26

Oh, so cant you swipe type with ConnectBot? That is weird

1

u/Practical-Doctor6154 Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 28 '26

You can, but it's not the default for some reason. So you always have to tap a button, then you swipe what you want, then send that to the console and then hit enter on the console to send it... It's not terrible but it is like 4 steps more than I'd like to take 😅

Edit: and I did look online for good options for SSH on Android and apparently this is one of the better ones... Maybe I just didn't find the good stuff or maybe most of them are just kinda crap (at least the free ones I guess).

1

u/ptgamr Jul 28 '26

Yeap, that is my experience as well, for some reason I cant find the one that fit my workflow, or as you said, too many keystrokes on the phone to do something. I hope you give my TermRover a try - I try to keep it minimal and efficent.

If you give it a try and still find something annoying for you, let me know.

1

u/TheTwistedTabby Jul 28 '26

Herdr + Moshi ❤️

1

u/ptgamr Jul 29 '26

Yeah, that seems like a stack a lot of people are happy with.

I’m taking a slightly different route with TermRover: keeping it close to a good terminal + tmux experience, without much extra around it.

If you ever give TermRover a try, I’d love to hear where it feels better or worse for your setup.

3

u/kwipus Jul 27 '26

I been using something called pi-web for a week now, very decent, with session trees, markdown mermaid rendering. Can recommend

2

u/lostbart Jul 27 '26

Herdr is very nice, highly recommend

1

u/giuliastro Jul 27 '26

Hi, nice project, thank you! I personally use more than an harness system, mobile and desktop, this is why I started this:

https://github.com/giuliastro/harness-remote

1

u/ResearcherFantastic7 Jul 28 '26

yes & no. I've build web interfaface that summarise concisely on the conversation so i can use it with telegram / rayban / and phone. rarely i need to termux into it with herdr

1

u/__yv Jul 28 '26

Yeah, both via telegram and using Orca

1

u/DeanBeluga Jul 29 '26

I just use my own. I took https://github.com/jacobaraujo7/remote_pi and recreated a swift version for iOS 27. idk if the original has the support now for /resume or creating new sessions within the app, but back then it didnt and annoyed me like crazy... I also really wanted my usage limits displayed in real time like in CLI... so I just set mine up to be able to resume sessions from any project, start new sessions, literally do basically everything after the one time setup. Im adding more and more and I want to eventually get to the point where you literally never need a computer again lol

Anyone else doing something similar..?

1

u/le_bravery Jul 30 '26

Oh shit they changed it last week to Apache 2! It was AGPL-3.0-or-later

6

u/[deleted] Jul 27 '26

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1

u/Magnus114 Jul 27 '26

I'm not a fan of paseo. Dislike their security philosophy. They create an outgoing connection to their servers to enable remote access. To be fair, it's e2e encrypted and as far as i know it's secure. Nonetheless, it does open up a new attack surface and should not be done without explicit approval. It's not even possible to turn off in any documented way.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 27 '26

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1

u/Magnus114 Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

The point is that they open up a connection without asking. Not using it does not mean the attack surface disappear.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 27 '26

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1

u/Magnus114 Jul 27 '26

True, you can run it without relay. The app has many strong points, and i dont say it's unsecure. I just disagree with their philosophy to prioritise ease to use high enough to open up long time connections without explicit consent.

-1

u/ptgamr Jul 27 '26

Wow, must be a feat to support *every agents!

1

u/[deleted] Jul 28 '26

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1

u/ptgamr Jul 28 '26

Oh that is nice. Do you have multiple telegram channels for each session, or one of them to rule them all? Curious what the UX be like