Conduit: Terminal, SSH, Mosh & SFTP

Caution

Android is on track to become a locked-down platform. Help keep it open.

Conduit's own source code is Apache-2.0. Android builds that include the local shell also redistribute third-party binaries under their own licenses; see Acknowledgements and THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

Conduit is for reaching real machines from your phone without signing into anything. Hosts, keys, and trusted fingerprints stay on the device - no account, no cloud sync, no subscription. Open a normal SSH shell, or a Mosh session that rides out Wi-Fi drops and cellular handoffs instead of dying with them. Sessions live in tabs, with on-screen modifier, arrow, and function keys for the things a phone keyboard doesn't have. Per-host tmux integration can attach or create a session on connect, choose the start directory, and expose tmux prefix, action, and scrollback controls from the key row.

On Android arm64, Conduit can also run an optional local Arch Linux shell through proot. It downloads an Arch Linux ARM image on first use and opens it like any other terminal tab. The Full Android build can also mount shared phone storage inside the shell at /mnt/android.

There's an SFTP browser for moving files around, host-key trust you manage yourself, an optional device-auth app lock, and a stack of built-in terminal themes (Catppuccin, Tokyo Night, Gruvbox, Nord, etc.). E-ink device support is coming! You can also export and import local backups of app settings, saved machines, and trusted host keys, either without secrets or encrypted with a backup password.

Mosh runs on dart_mosh, a clean-room Dart implementation of the protocol, and the terminal is conduit_vt, a fork of xterm.dart.

Features

• SSH terminal sessions with saved machine profiles, tag and search filters, sorting by last connected, name, or date added, and tabbed workspaces.
• Mosh sessions for roaming across Wi-Fi drops and network changes.
• Per-host tmux integration with auto attach/create, start directories, prefix key selection, action shortcuts, and scrollback mode.
• SFTP browser for navigating, downloading, uploading, renaming, and deleting files.
• OpenSSH private key, password, hardware security key, and external (server-driven) authentication.
• Import private keys from a file or generate an ed25519 key on device, with optional passphrase encryption and one-tap public-key copy and export.
• OpenSSH FIDO security-key auth for ed25519-sk and ecdsa-sk credentials, tested with YubiKey and designed for CTAP-compatible keys.
• Android hardware-key auth over USB or NFC; iOS hardware-key auth over NFC. Register multiple hardware keys per host and Conduit tries each until one matches.
• Optional per-host SSH agent forwarding for private-key and hardware-key auth, so a remote host can use your key to reach further hosts; forwarded hardware keys still require a touch for every onward signature.
• Trusted host key management with explicit fingerprint review.
• Import and export backups for app settings, saved machines, ordering, and trusted host keys, with options to omit secrets or encrypt credentials with a password.
• Customizable on-screen key row with modifiers, arrows, function keys, key repeat, latching modifiers, and your own text snippets and control-key combos.
• Saved global and per-machine snippets from the key row, with hidden snippets for passwords or secrets and optional per-machine run-on-connect snippets.
• Optional device-auth app lock for protecting saved machines and credentials.
• Built-in terminal themes, font sizing, palette choices, and appearance controls.
• On-device local Arch Linux shell (Android, arm64) with pacman, running unprivileged via proot - no root, no server. Uses Termux-packaged tooling.
• Full Android build: mount shared phone storage in the local shell at /mnt/android; the Google Play build omits the restricted all-files permission.
• Local-first storage: no account, no cloud sync, no subscription.

Acknowledgements

The local shell uses Android builds of open-source tools maintained and packaged by the Termux project:

• proot - the userspace chroot/ptrace engine used for the unprivileged Linux userland.
• The Arch Linux ARM root filesystem, distributed via Termux's proot-distro. Arch Linux ARM itself is maintained by the Arch Linux ARM project.
• busybox, GNU tar, xz/liblzma, libtalloc, and the libandroid-* shims.

If the local shell is useful to you, consider supporting Termux, GNU/FSF, or Arch Linux ARM.

Conduit redistributes these components under their own licenses and provides a corresponding source offer for GPL/LGPL components. The component list, license texts, upstream source archives, exact package checksums, and pinned source recipe snapshot are in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md. GPL/LGPL source-offer details live in third_party/source-offer.

Conduit's own source code is licensed Apache-2.0. Bundled third-party binaries and downloaded rootfs packages are not relicensed by Conduit. Mosh runs on dart_mosh and the terminal is conduit_vt, a fork of xterm.dart.

Contributors

Conduit is improved by community contributions. See CONTRIBUTORS.md for acknowledgements.

Screenshots