iSH Shell

Name: iSH Shell
Rating: 4.7 (1230 reviews)
Author: Theodore Dubois

by Theodore Dubois

iPhone · iPad

Active Last checked 31 Jul 2026

App Store ↗

Quick verdict

What it is: Store information collected; independent summary not yet available.
At a glance: Free to download

Categories and search queries

Official categories

Developer Tools
Utilities

AppCorpus categories

Key functions

Function	Availability	Access	Scope	Evidence
Free app	Yes	Free	—	Store published

Screens

No screenshots collected yet.

Pricing & paywalls

App Store

Shown for US

Free

Last verified 31 Jul 2026

Ratings & reviews

App Store

Shown for US

4.7 1230 ratings · App Store

5/5Great Linux Enviorment
This app is exactly what I needed on my iPad for coding without my mac! I’ve always wanted to be able to do light development in c/c++ and python with git support on the iPad and this app perfectly allows for this. I was able to install z shell instead of the base ash that comes with this version of linux as it better matches mac. Everything I wanted to install in the environment was able to be installed (though like mentioned, I only really wanted to be able to do minimal work on projects while away from my desktop). Like some others mentioned, it can be slow at times and have keyboard inputs freeze where you have to restart the app. Also, I wish there was additional themes for the app and native support of multiple windows. Overall this has been the best linux environment I have used on my iPad and would highly recommend this to any developer!

Jacobd29 · 31 Jul 2026
5/5Excellent utility, if slow
Before I get into what I like, I'll mention my main dislikes. The most noticeable is speed: because it's JIT-like, you can tell that the performance is slower than native (for example, taking a few seconds to open an ssh key). Additionally, while many apps that I use (gcc, python, node, to name a few) work, not everything will work out of the box (for example, ip addr doesn't behave). Despite these limitations, I would still give this app 5 stars: it just significantly improves the utility of my device. I mainly use it as an ssh/mosh box, but I can also do some basic programming locally. For fun, I even got a VNC server to run! Even as a basic tool for SSH, I can easily just use my own keys and I don't see noticeable delay once the connection is established. There's probably more interesting things I could do with it given the support of APK.

Lavioso371 · 31 Jul 2026
5/5Excellent Port of Alpine Linux
I’ve been around since the project started and have followed the beta til now. The work involved in the creation of this app and the community standing behind it amazing and deserves credit for porting this over to iOS. Many man hours were put in by Theodore himself and others such as the creator UTM and other contributors that have given valuable insight to the community and have pushed the limitations of iSH in order to present a full features Alpine Linux experience right here on your iOS device which is no small feat. This application allows much freedom over file s creation, editing, and even movement of files and folders laterally to other application folders. It’s worth the download even if you just want to place games in the terminal or ssh into your devices. Enjoy! Project Zer0

Google's Project Zero · 31 Jul 2026
4/5Great Linux app so far
This is a great app, and it has great potential. I've done some research on the web, and apparently there was supposed to be in APK package manager for this app under Alpine Linux. When I try to install APK packages, it says, "Ash, APK, not found". I was trying to compile Emacs from the source, but it requires the GNU make package which this app doesn't come with preinstalled. Other than that though, this is a great step forward to having Linux in your pocket. Though it's limited and sandboxed, and can't necessarily run directly on iOS hardware, this is something awesome too see. One thing I particularly like is the voiceover accessibility support. I was able to connect an external keyboard and start working with Linux on my iOS device. The only thing that could be improved is that it's a little slow when you're typing commands, but this is still an awesome app. I am looking forward to future development.

DJAllegretto · 31 Jul 2026
5/5Excellent emulator
This app really helps my iPhone be way more useful by including alpine Linux with all the things it needs and without anything it doesn’t. If you need a simple Linux terminal to do things like run IPMItool or mess around with docker, this is the app for you. Although it is an emulator/virtualization app, it doesn’t feel like anything’s being emulated- it feels like im talking to the native shell of my iPhone. Its simplicity is key-there is no desktop or emulated screen, but that’s actually a positive because the shell is so useable and iPhone friendly. I use this app more than I use my actual computer now whenever I need to use a Linux terminal for system administration! It’s one of the best apps on the iPhone ever! Also I love the no ads!

AndrewBilotti · 31 Jul 2026

Privacy & accessibility

App Store

Privacy

Data Not Collected Developer declared

Accessibility

No accessibility labels collected yet.

Versions

App Store

1.0
1.0.1
Fixed bugs: - Status bar being invisible when the device is in dark mode and the terminal has a light background
1.0.2
- Fixes for some of the top crashes since launch - Upside-down orientation is disabled to match other apps on notchless iPhones
1.0.3
Fixed bugs: - Crash when entering recovery mode - Other KVO-related crashes - Incorrect syntax for multiple DNS search domains in resolv.conf (thanks @mitchblank) - Broken seek in procfs, causing many things dependent on it to hang - Directory traversal in filesystem renaming
1.1
New stuff: - apk has been added. You can use it install Alpine packages! If you're updating from an earlier version, you'll need to manually activate it it: https://go.ish.app/get-apk Fixed bugs: - Unable to cd to /proc/pid/fd in the shell
1.1.1
New stuff: - Updated Alpine repositories - Added some more icons - Can use fonts installed via profile on iOS 14 Fixed bugs: - Crash when running `ps` many times in parallel (thanks @emkey1) - Titles missing in some settings pages - OOM when too much is outputted to the terminal (fixed by slowing down terminal output)
1.2
iSH now uses its own infrastructure for APK downloads instead of on-demand resources, making downloads more reliable and user-friendly.
1.2.1
Fixed bugs: - Any text containing non-ASCII characters would disappear on iOS 14.5 or later New stuff: - Updated Alpine repositories to the latest as of 2021-05-29
1.2.2
New stuff: - Added an option to hide the status bar - Updated Alpine repositories to the latest as of 2021-06-25 Fixed bugs: - Significantly improve launch performance
1.2.3
New stuff: - Updated to Alpine 3.14. If a red badge appears on the settings button, tap and follow the prompts to migrate your repositories. - Improvements to font measurement in the terminal - Implemented pmaxub (thanks @akemimadoka on GitHub) - Comment added to /etc/apk/repositories explaining what it is Fixed bugs: - Removed file provider cleanup timer, reducing the amount of time iSH spends in the background doing nothing - Infinite loop in sigtimedwait
1.3
New stuff: - iSH now supports custom themes - Preferences are now exposed via procfs - Some more app icon choices - Hyperlinks created by OSC 8 are underlined instead of invisible Fixed bugs: - Forward SO_RCVTIMEO, SO_SNDTIMEO in setsockopts to support snac - Add about four dozen SIMD instructions to improve support for nodejs and Rust - Fix bottom keyboard inset for iPad, Stage Manager, and devices with no home button - Implement /proc/pid/task to fix recent versions of GDB - Fix VoiceOver focus stealing keyboard focus on iOS 15+ - Resolve an issue with xadd causing git clones to hang - Trigger segfault on unaligned cmpxchg8b, which iSH does not support - Fix a race condition that causes some output to be lost - Fix toolbar button sizing
1.3.1
Fixed bugs: - Send better diagnostics to me through Apple when a crash happens - Dump stack in dmesg output for segmentation fault and illegal instruction errors - Include file timestamps in filesystem exports and imports - Fix crash when renaming a theme - Fix timer error on startup of Vim 9 - Fix deadlock on exit of Vim 9 - Fix startup of newer versions of htop
1.3.2 · 21 May 2023
Fixed bugs: - Make better diagnostics work in the file provider too, to diagnose Files app issues

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Alternatives

Pyto IDE — Same category + similar ratings
Web Inspector — Same category + similar ratings

Availability by market

No LIVE observation for GB yet.

Data quality & evidence

Page completeness: Live store listing
Last verified: 31 Jul 2026
Sources: App Store

Independent summary has not been published yet.
Screenshots: not yet collected

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Compare iSH Shell with Pyto IDE.

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GET /api/v3/apps/1436902243

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