MochaSoft's Mocha Telnet (Telnet and SSH2), often searched for as Mocha SSH, is one of the long-running terminal apps on iOS. It is a VT220 emulator at heart, and its real niche is legacy and industrial work: green-screen VT220 sessions, auto-login into older hosts, and barcode-scanner integration with camera and hardware scanners. ShellDrop sits on the other side of the spectrum, a modern SSH client tuned for tmux on Linux or macOS and built for driving AI coding agents.
Different jobs, different apps. Side-by-side anyway.
| ShellDrop 5 | Mocha Telnet | |
|---|---|---|
| Voice dictation | Built in. On-device Apple speech free, or your own Groq key. | Not a listed feature |
| Public-key auth (SSH keys) | Yes. Ed25519 and Secure Enclave P-256 | No. Password authentication only |
| Password auth | Yes | Yes |
| Secure Enclave hardware keys | Yes. P-256 private key never leaves the Secure Enclave | No |
| Paste a screenshot to your agent (uploads, path at the prompt) | Yes. Any image, multi-image, over SSH | No file-transfer path at all |
| Attach a file or video to your agent (uploads, path at the prompt) | Yes. Files, photos or video, over SSH | No file-transfer path at all |
| Pricing model | Free. No in-app purchases | $5.99 one-time; free Telnet Lite pauses ~30s after every 5 min |
| Platforms | Native on iPhone and iPad, Vision Pro with version 5, macOS coming soon | iPhone, iPad, Apple Vision |
| Account required | No | No |
| Telemetry | None | None. Developer collects no data |
| SFTP / file transfer | No | No |
| Terminal emulation depth | Standard xterm-256color | VT220 and ANSI, strong on legacy modes |
| Tmux single-finger scroll | Yes | Screen scroll with double-tap lock (~400-line buffer) |
| iPad layout (incl. 13" iPad Pro M4) | Universal app, full-canvas landscape, centred toolbar | iPad supported |
| Custom command shortcut | One Tap toolbar button | Text macros, user-defined keys |
| Latest release | ShellDrop 5 (2026) | v5.7 (January 2025) |
Copy an image anywhere on the phone and paste it into the session. Your agent reads it on the server. Multi-image paste works too. The same toolbar has a paperclip button for files: pick one from Files, or a photo or video from the library, upload over SSH, and the path lands at the prompt. Mocha Telnet has no way to do either: it has no file-transfer path at all, and it authenticates by password only, with no SSH key support. For anyone feeding screenshots to a coding agent all day, that is the gap between one paste and a five-step detour.
The clipboard works the other way too. Ask the agent to write something, tell it to copy the result, and it lands on the phone's clipboard ready to paste into another app. It is opt-in and takes about ten seconds to set up. Terminal text selection is now a dedicated mode: toggle it on, long-press a word, drag the handles, copy. And Nerd Fonts (FiraCode and JetBrains Mono) ship bundled, so the glyphs nvim and LazyVim rely on render the way they should.
Single-finger swipe through tmux scrollback. Esc, Ctrl-C, arrow keys, Shift-Tab, dedicated tmux detach button on the toolbar at all times. The whole app is built around the case of leaving Claude Code or another coding agent running in tmux on a Linux box or Mac Mini and checking in from the phone.
ShellDrop generates P-256 keys inside the iPhone Secure Enclave. Private key cannot be exported, even by ShellDrop. Ed25519 generation and paste-import of unencrypted OpenSSH keys also supported.
No paid tier, no Lite/Pro split.
ShellDrop adds Voice Drop, a built-in mic on the keyboard toolbar. It transcribes on-device with Apple speech at no cost, or through your own Groq API key for whisper-large-v3-turbo, and drops the words at the cursor without sending Return. Dictating a long prompt to an agent is the kind of input a phone keyboard is worst at, and it is where ShellDrop puts the least friction.
Version 5 also added custom key bindings for the keyboard toolbar: create your own Tmux-aware keys in Settings, Ctrl plus a key with an optional follow-up, and arrange them like any stock key.
Mocha Telnet was built around faithful VT220 and ANSI emulation. If you connect to a system that needs proper VT220 behaviour, or you run barcode scanners (camera or hardware) into a green-screen session, Mocha Telnet is more at home than a tmux-focused modern app. It also handles auto-login, user-defined keys, and text macros for repetitive legacy workflows.
Mocha Telnet is a $5.99 one-time purchase, or the free Telnet Lite version that pauses for about thirty seconds after every five minutes of use. There is no account, and its App Store privacy label reports no data collected. On price and privacy it is a straightforward classic.
Mocha Telnet has been on iOS since the early App Store years, most recently updated to version 5.7 in January 2025. The corner cases are well-worn.
No. Mocha Telnet authenticates by password only; its own documentation notes that cryptographic keys are not supported. ShellDrop supports SSH keys, including Ed25519 and P-256 keys backed by the iPhone's Secure Enclave, where the private key never leaves the hardware.
Mocha Telnet is a $5.99 one-time purchase. There is also a free Telnet Lite version, which pauses for about thirty seconds after every five minutes of use. ShellDrop is fully free with no in-app purchases.
Yes. Mocha Telnet is a VT220 emulator at heart and is strong on legacy terminal work, including ANSI colour and barcode-scanner integration. ShellDrop targets standard modern terminal use against tmux.
Yes. Ed25519, ECDSA P-256/P-384/P-521 paste-import, plus Secure Enclave-backed P-256 keys.
ShellDrop. Single-finger tmux scrollback, dedicated detach button, background keep-alive, One Tap for firing commands at the agent.
Mocha Telnet has been on the App Store for many years. Its most recent update was version 5.7 in January 2025.
ShellDrop is on the App Store. Universal iPhone and iPad, iOS 17+. Free, no subscription.
