A terminal
built for thumbs.
Most phone terminals fall over the moment you open something interactive. Kammel runs a patched xterm emulator wrapped in the controls a physical keyboard would otherwise give you.
Full xterm emulation
256 colours, the alternate screen buffer and mouse support. That is the specific set that decides whether vim, htop, tmux, lazygit and TUI coding agents render properly or turn into escape-sequence soup — and it is why a terminal that only echoes text is not enough.
The keys a soft keyboard cannot send
A phone keyboard has no Ctrl, no Esc, no Tab and no arrows. Kammel adds them back as rows of tappable keys you can rebuild entirely.
Shortcut editor
Build the rows yourself: labels, payloads, order, key height and width, across as many pages as you need.
Sticky modifiers
Arm Ctrl or Shift, then press the next key, and the combination is sent as one chord.
Fullscreen mode
Collapse every piece of app chrome and hand the whole screen to the shell, with a floating pill to come back.
Reading and copying output on a small screen
Handle-based selection works over the terminal grid, so you can copy output and paste straight back into the shell. The link grabber scans the scrollback for URLs and lists them newest first — the fix for a dev server or tunnel link that scrolled away three builds ago.
Make it yours
Pick the terminal colour scheme, the monospace font and the size for both terminal and editor, adjust interface density, and set an accent colour — including custom ones you mix yourself. The whole interface ships in English and Spanish and switches instantly without dropping your sessions.
Not a local Linux environment
Worth being clear about: Kammel is a terminal for connecting to machines over SSH, not a Linux distribution running on the phone. If what you want is a local shell with a package manager on the device itself, Termux is the right tool. If what you want is to reach the servers you already have, that is what Kammel is built for.
Questions
Does vim or tmux work properly?
Yes. Kammel implements the alternate screen buffer, 256 colours and mouse reporting, which is what full-screen TUI programs such as vim, htop and tmux need to draw correctly.
Can I send Ctrl-C and Esc?
Yes, from the programmable key rows. Ctrl and Shift can also be armed as sticky modifiers so any chord can be typed on a soft keyboard.
Is this a local terminal like Termux?
No. Kammel is an SSH terminal for connecting to remote machines. Termux gives you a Linux environment on the phone itself; the two solve different problems and many people use both.
Free, open source.
Keep reading
Free SSH Client for Android
Kammel is a free, open-source SSH client for Android: multi-session terminal, SFTP explorer, code editor and port forwarding. No account, no subscription.
Run Claude Code on Android over SSH
Drive Claude Code and other TUI coding agents from your phone over SSH. Agent notifications, a prompt library, dictation and screenshot upload over SFTP.
PuTTY Alternative for Android
PuTTY has no official Android version. Kammel is a free, open-source SSH client for Android with a full terminal, saved sessions, SFTP and port forwarding.