a-Shell mini
Nicolas Holzschuch Developer Tools iPhoneiPadiPod touch
a-Shell mini is a free Developer Tools app for iPhone and iPad by Nicolas Holzschuch. Rated 4.6/5 from 122 ratings. Requires iOS 14.0.
- Rating
- 4.6
- 122 ratings
- Price
- Free
- on the App Store
- Size
- 383 MB
- Age 17+
- Updated
- Oct 24
- 2026 · v2.3.0
Screenshots
About a-Shell mini
a-Shell mini is a complete local terminal emulator, allowing to run most Unix commands on you iOS device. You can transfer files using scp and curl, edit them with vim and ed, process them using grep, awk and sed. Work with git repositories using lg2. Most commands are compiled for iOS native Arm64 format, making them fast and well integrated with iOS underlying BSD Unix. a-Shell mini includes Python, Lua, JavaScript and webAssembly for programming and scripting. It also includes native ffmpeg and convert for fast image and video conversion. There are also multiple network utilities: nslookup, ping, whois, ifconfig... Type help for help, help -l to get the full list of commands. a-Shell mini can be controlled from Shortcuts: run commands in order, process files in a-Shell, get the results as text or files, transfer files to other apps... a-Shell mini uses iPadOS 13+ “multiple windows” ability, so you can run multiple shells at the same time, with different commands, in different directories. You can edit a file in one window with vim and process it in the other with python. a-Shell mini is a minimalist terminal, designed to have a very small footprint (less than 250 MB). If you need more commands, please consider a-Shell, which has more Python packages, more JavaScript modules, Perl, make, a C and C++ compiler and TeX.
Ratings & reviews
4.6
122 ratings
What’s new
Version 2.3.0 · Updated October 24, 2026
- updated certificate files for the main app and for Python to fix for the eMudhra CA Key Compromise issue. - support for user fonts - support for color themes - bug fixes: the terminal remains above the keyboard, the terminal gets the focus back on its own after you dismiss a "view" or a "play" window, matching the toolbar color with the terminal color, fixed several places where the app would crash...
App privacy
The developer, Nicolas Holzschuch, reported these privacy practices to Apple.
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Alternatives to a-Shell mini
Looking for apps like a-Shell mini? Here are 6 similar apps on the App Store. The highest rated is Textastic Code Editor (4.7/5), and all 6 are free to download.
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| App | Rating | Price | Last updated | Compare |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| a-Shell mini | 4.6 / 5 (122 ratings) | Free | October 24, 2026 | |
| Kodex | 4.2 / 5 (208) | Free | Apr 1, 2024 | Compare |
| Textastic Code Editor | 4.7 / 5 (2,571) | Free | Oct 21, 2026 | Compare |
| Pyto IDE | 3.7 / 5 (1,001) | Free | Jun 9, 2024 | Compare |
| Swifty Compiler: Swift IDE | 4.5 / 5 (203) | Free | May 11, 2026 | Compare |
| Web Inspector | 3.9 / 5 (160) | Free | Aug 29, 2026 | Compare |
| Code Editor - Compiler & IDE | 3.1 / 5 (44) | Free | Feb 13, 2026 | Compare |
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