I built a remote terminal that keeps the same shell when I switch to my phone

CLIAnywhere — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 03:41:16 +0000

I got tired of losing context every time I left my desk.

SSH works, but each connect is a new shell. tmux helps if you already live in it — I wanted something closer to "same session, different screen," including from my phone, without opening ports on my home network.

That's what CLIAnywhere is for.

What it actually does

You run a small daemon (claw) on your Windows, macOS, or Linux machine. Then you open the iOS / Android app or the web client, link the PC, and you're in that machine's terminal.

A few things I cared about while building it:

The session keeps running on the PC if the phone sleeps or the network drops. Reconnect and you're back in the same shell.
Switch between desktop and phone without starting over.
Browse files on the PC and pull them down to the phone when you need a log or a build artifact.
Open localhost / LAN web apps from the phone (handy for a local localhost:3000 while you're on the couch).
Prefer a direct P2P link; fall back to an encrypted relay when P2P can't punch through. No public IP, no port forwarding.

Commands run on your PC. The phone is just another window into that session.

How connection security works (short version)

Account login gets you to your devices. Each PC also has a local Security Code that stays on that machine — it isn't uploaded to our servers. Traffic uses DTLS for P2P or WSS for relay, with SPAKE2 for key exchange and AES-256-GCM for the payload. The relay only forwards ciphertext.

Daemon is open for inspection

The PC daemon is on GitHub: CLIAnywhere/clianywhere_daemon. Some antivirus tools flag remote-access software in general; if that bothers you, build from source. Releases for macOS are signed/notarized.

There's a free tier (with ads on the free client). Paid plans are in-app if you want more.

Setup in practice

Install the app (App Store / Play) or use the web app.
Run the daemon on the PC.
Create an access key in the app (or scan the daemon QR) and paste it in.

Usually under a minute if the PC build/install is already done.

Who this is for

If you already live in Termius / plain SSH and that's enough, you probably don't need this. It's more for people who leave long jobs running (builds, servers, coding agents in a CLI) and want the same live session from the phone without babysitting tmux and without punching holes in the router.

Site: clianywhere.com

Daemon: github.com/CLIAnywhere/clianywhere_daemon