a-Shell App Store Review

The notable boundary-pusher in the iPadOS/iOS local command line.

David Blue
Handset
Published in
1 min readJan 19, 2023

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There are now quite a few terminal emulator-esque apps on the App Store, but I’ve been using a-Shell since it was joined only by Blink (from which it was forked) and iSH. As it was then, a-Shell remains the only one of these with which one can actually accomplish command line tasks locally beyond screwing around. I am ultimately not a command line native, and I don’t have the basic theory beneath my use of Python scripts, yet I’ve been able to accomplish startlingly powerful things within this app, thanks in large part to gracious and immediately-available support via the project’s Discord server.

If you’ve found yourself here by way of a Siri Shortcut’s requirement, I would encourage you to take the time to investigate the commands said shortcut(s) run — try running them yourself!

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David Blue
Handset

Self-described Software Historian, writing in public about social software & services. Always here to help. HML: https://davidblue.wtf/contact