Getting started: your first connection

TermHub is a real SSH terminal for Android. Your keys stay in your phone's secure keystore and connect straight to your host, nothing passes through a TermHub server. This walks you from install to a live session, and shows you how to drive it without the on-screen keyboard.

1. Install TermHub

   Install TermHub from Google Play. Open the app and you'll land on your hosts list with a couple of sample entries showing the shape of things.

2. Add your first host

   Tap +, give the host a name, and enter its address and username. The port defaults to 22. The address can be a hostname, a LAN IP, or a Tailscale name, whatever you'd type after ssh on a computer.

   

3. Choose how you sign in

   TermHub offers three ways to authenticate. Automatic (the default) offers keyless and configured keys before any password prompt, the right pick for a key-configured host or Tailscale SSH. Password stores a password in your device's secure keystore. Private Key lets you import a key file, paste one, or generate a new Ed25519 key pair right in the app.

   If you generate a key in TermHub, add its public half to the server once:

   # on the server, paste the public key TermHub shows you
   echo "ssh-ed25519 AAAA... you@termhub" >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

   

4. Choose your connection: shell, Herdr, or tmux

   At the bottom of the Add Host form, the Startup row decides what you land in. Plain shell is a normal terminal. Tmux or Herdr attach a persistent session, so a long-running job, a build, or an AI coding CLI like Claude Code or Codex, keeps running when the phone sleeps or the network drops, and you rejoin it on reconnect. (Herdr and tmux are both terminal multiplexers; pick whichever runs on your host.)

   Name the session and TermHub attaches it for you every time, you never run tmux by hand. Just want a quick terminal? Leave it on Plain shell.

5. Add a fallback address optional

   A host can carry a second address that TermHub tries only if the first is unreachable. Put a fast LAN address first and a Tailscale name as the fallback, and you connect locally at home and fall through to the tailnet everywhere else. See the Tailscale guide for the full setup.

6. Connect

   Tap the host. TermHub opens a login shell so your PATH and prompt come through, runs any startup command, and drops you into a live terminal with a compact status header.

   

7. Drive it without the keyboard

   Tap the floating puck to open the Command Dial, TermHub's signature control surface. From it you get common keys, a sticky Ctrl chord, arrows, Esc and Tab, saved snippets, tmux/herdr window and pane control, on-device voice, and Send Image. The soft keyboard only appears when you type a long command. Beyond the dial, URLs in the terminal are tappable, and a long-press starts a text selection you can copy.

   

Find your way around

The home screen lists your connections. Each row shows how it signs in and what it starts, a LIVE tag while a session is connected, and a note when an agent in it has just finished. Tap a row to connect, swipe to duplicate or delete, and long-press to edit. The gear opens Settings and + adds a host.

Settings is where you make it yours: light, dark, or system appearance, the font, a terminal color theme, and text size under Appearance; the app keyboard, the shortcut bar, and the command dial under Input; voice, completion notifications, and encrypted backup below that.

Get TermHub

TermHub is live on Google Play. Install it and connect to your first host in a couple of minutes.

Free to install. If anything snags, email us and we'll walk you through it.