Blog
Notes on running terminals, coding agents and long jobs on a Mac, and reaching them from a phone.
- How to get a notification when a terminal command finishes on Mac
Stop checking on long builds and tests. Five ways to get notified when a terminal command finishes on macOS, from a one-line osascript to automatic alerts for every slow command, and on your phone.
- Keep a process running after you close the terminal or SSH disconnects
Why closing a terminal kills the program in it, and five ways to stop that on Mac and Linux: nohup, disown, tmux, screen and launchd. With when to use each.
- How to SSH into your Mac from your iPhone (step by step)
Turn on Remote Login, connect from an iPhone SSH app, switch to key-based login, and reach your Mac safely from outside your home network. Plus the settings that stop your session dying when the phone locks.
- How to access your Mac remotely without port forwarding
Port forwarding is risky and often impossible behind carrier-grade NAT. Here are the alternatives for reaching your Mac from anywhere: mesh VPNs, reverse tunnels, tunnel services and relays, and how safe each one is.
- How to open your localhost dev server on your phone
Your dev server works on your Mac but not on your phone. Here's why (it's listening on localhost only), the flag to fix it for Vite, Next.js, Rails, Django and others, and what to do about the firewall and HTTPS.
- caffeinate: keep your Mac awake from the terminal (every flag explained)
The caffeinate command keeps a Mac awake while a job runs. What each flag (-d, -i, -m, -s, -u, -t, -w) actually does, the combinations worth remembering, how to check what's keeping your Mac awake, and what caffeinate can't do.
- How to keep builds and coding agents running when you leave your Mac
Long builds, test runs and coding agents fail for three boring reasons: the Mac sleeps, the session dies, or the job waits for an answer. Here's how to handle each one.
- SSH, tmux, mosh or PandaSend: reaching your Mac's terminal from a phone
Four ways to use your Mac's terminal from a phone, compared honestly: what each needs, how each handles dropped connections, and which one fits which job.
- How an end-to-end encrypted terminal relay works
PandaSend's relay connects your phone to your Mac without being able to read either side. A walk through the pairing, the handshake and the message stream, built entirely from libsodium.
- Designing a terminal for a phone: five problems and how we solved them
Keyboards that hide your prompt, missing Ctrl keys, two screens fighting over one terminal size, scrolling inside full-screen apps, and reconnecting without redrawing. What we learned building PandaSend's phone terminal.
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