Wednesday, January 1, 2014

JuiceSSH the free SSH client for Android developed by Linux system admins

SSH client is an essential tool for us to have remote access to the command line console of Linux/Android/Unix system, be it a server or network device that we manage, or our own personal computer, or a TV box, etc.

In Windows system, most of us use PuTTY or similar SSH client to remotely connect to our Linux/Android/Unix system. Beside Windows, there are PuTTY for Symbian, Windows Mobile, iPhone, ... but where is the PuTTY for Android?

Nowadays we tend to carry a smartphone, perhaps together with a tablet with us, more often than carrying a laptop. In order to practically work on the text-based SSH terminal, the smartphone need to have a large screen, and smartphone that fulfil this requirement is very likely an Android phone. Perhaps the tablet that we carry with us is also an Android tablet. Therefore, the market demand for a good SSH client for Android is definitely there, and JuiceSSH that I'm going to introduce here is among the best I found so far.

With a good SSH client in our Android device, we can access to the server, network equipment or computer anytime, anywhere for emergency troubleshooting, configuration, administration, etc.

JuiceSSH is an all-in-one terminal client for Android. Beside Secure Shell (SSH), it also supports Mobile Shell (MOSH), Local Shell and the unencrypted Telnet. Support for file transfer with SCP and SFTP is in the pipeline. With Local Shell support, you can get into the command line console of your Android device.



JuiceSSH is developed by Paul Maddox (a Linux system architect) and Tom Maddox (a system administrator). Being frequent SSH users themselves, I believe they know well about what their users want. For example, JuiceSSH has a popup keyboard on top of the Android keyboard for the command line commonly used Esc key, arrow keys, PgUp, PgDown, etc.


JuiceSSH has a full colour terminal that supports UTF-8 characters (including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc.). It also supports copy and paste within the session. It will open the web browser when an URL shown on its screen is tapped.

If you deal a lot with Linux/Android/Unix system, this is a good tool for you in your Android devices.


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