ish-app/ish

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: prerelease_only no_license

Adoption not part of the score

20369 stars · 1497 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

iSH is an iOS/iPadOS app that runs a Linux shell locally using a usermode x86 emulator and syscall translation. It ships an Alpine Linux environment so users can run common command-line tools on their iPhone or iPad.

Use cases

• run a linux terminal on iphone
• use shell commands on ipad
• run alpine linux on ios
• ssh and edit files from a mobile terminal
• learn linux command line on a phone
• run busybox tools on ios

When to choose

• you want a real Linux shell environment on an iPhone or iPad without jailbreaking
• you need lightweight command-line tools like sed, cat, and ssh on the go
• you want an open-source terminal app you can build or extend yourself

When to avoid

• you need native ARM performance or heavy workloads - x86 emulation is slow
• you need a full desktop Linux distribution or GUI applications
• you need guaranteed App Store availability - the app has faced removal disputes with Apple

Facets

application · maturity active

interpreter cli terminal-ui file-system operating-systems developer-tools cross-platform cpp c x86-emulation linux-shell syscall-translation alpine-linux terminal-emulator usermode-emulator command-line ios mobile

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="ish-app/ish")