TermPhone boots a real iOS simulator, streams its screen into your terminal, and lets you — or your AI agent — tap, swipe, type and test without ever opening the Simulator GUI.
$ curl -fsSL https://termphone.com/install.sh | sh
# one command · installs CLI + MCP server · needs macOS + Xcode
Measured on a Mac mini · iPhone 18 Pro simulator · iOS 27.2 · Xcode 27.2 — real numbers from the v1 build, not marketing math.
Every feature below shipped and was verified in the v1 build: booted, tapped, recorded and exported on a real simulator. No vapourware sections.
TermPhone pipes the simulator's display through an MJPEG stream pipeline and renders it live in your terminal — ~11 fps where naive screenshot polling crawls at 1.6 fps. Watch animations, scroll physics and loading states the way a user actually sees them.
$ termphone watch pro stream: mjpeg · 80 cols · 11.08 fps avg renderer: half-block (auto) · kitty / iterm2 available
Other terminal tools break on new Xcode releases with “Incompatible device” errors — they pair devices to the wrong runtime. TermPhone pairs every device to its runtime explicitly, so it boots clean on Xcode 27 / iOS 27.2.
observe returns what's on screen; act taps by name — “tap General”, not raw coordinates. Every action carries a screen stamp: if the UI changed underneath, the command stops with STALE_SCREEN instead of tapping blind. Ships with an MCP server (7 tools), so Claude and other agents drive the phone natively.
$ termphone act tap "General" --device pro ✗ STALE_SCREEN — UI changed since observe; re-observe first
Named sessions — pro (iPhone 18 Pro) and 17e (iPhone 17e) — boot together and render side-by-side at 13.9 fps with labels. Agent commands target a session by name; a tap meant for one phone can never land on the other.
$ termphone sessions pro iPhone 18 Pro Booted stamp #a41f 17e iPhone 17e Booted stamp #77c2
Record a flow once — Home → Settings → General → About — then replay it anytime. Verification uses a visual hash, so live values (clock, storage) don't cause false failures.
In kitty / iTerm2, the phone renders as a full-quality image, not blocks. And you drive it yourself: click = tap, drag = swipe, wheel = scroll.
Clean status bar (9:41, full battery) and 1320×2868 screenshots, exported with a manifest. The chore every indie dev hates, reduced to one line.
Captured from the shipping v1 build on a Mac mini. Switch tabs — every frame is a real output of the command named under it.
termphone up pro created the device with an explicit iPhone 18 Pro ↔ iOS 27.2 pairing and booted it to this home screen. No Simulator.app window, no clicking through Xcode — and none of the “Incompatible device” failures that hit other tools on Xcode 27.
From here, termphone watch streams this exact screen into your terminal.
This About page was reached with zero manual input — only observe and act commands: Home → Settings → General → About. The agent tapped elements by name, and the stale-screen guard re-verified the UI before every tap.
Typing was verified the same way: Spotlight search for “Safari” returned real results.
The actual half-block terminal render: pro on the home screen, 17e inside Settings, both live at 13.9 fps. Test a layout on a big phone and a small phone in the same glance — no window juggling.
Multi-device is a Pro feature — the free tier runs one device.
termphone appstore export overrides the status bar to the classic 9:41 / full-battery look and writes 1320×2868 PNGs plus a manifest. This frame is a real export from the v1 build — what you see is literally the file it produced.
Click through — these are the real v1 commands, exactly as they run.
$ curl -fsSL https://termphone.com/install.sh | sh $ termphone up pro # boot iPhone 18 Pro (iOS 27.2) $ termphone watch pro # live screen in your terminal $ termphone tap 195 812 # or just click — mouse mode is built in
One install command, one boot command, and the phone is on your screen. Explicit device↔runtime pairing means it still works the day a new Xcode drops.
$ termphone observe --device pro # elements + screenshot + stamp $ termphone act tap "Settings" # tap by name, not coordinates $ termphone act type "Safari" # real keyboard input $ termphone mcp serve # 7 tools for Claude & other agents
Hand the phone to your AI agent. The STALE_SCREEN guard means it re-checks the UI before acting — no blind taps on a screen that already changed.
$ termphone up pro 17e # two named sessions $ termphone watch --all # side-by-side, labelled, 13.9 fps $ termphone act tap "General" --device 17e ✓ delivered to 17e only — pro untouched
Big phone, small phone, same flow. Sessions keep their own screen stamps, so parallel testing never cross-contaminates. Pro feature.
$ termphone record flow.json # capture a session + video $ termphone replay flow.json # re-run it, visual-hash verified ✓ $ termphone appstore export # 1320×2868, clean status bar, manifest
Record a golden path once; replay it after every change as a smoke test. Then export your store screenshots from the same session. Pro features.
You can — for clicking around by hand. TermPhone exists for everything around that: automation, agents, repetition and shipping.
| Capability | TermPhone | Simulator.app GUI | Screenshot scripts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lives entirely in the terminal | ✓ Yes | — GUI windows | ✓ Yes |
| Live screen (10+ fps stream) | ✓ ~11 fps | ✓ On screen | — ~1.6 fps polling |
| AI agent control (MCP) | ✓ 7 tools built in | — No | — DIY |
| Stale-screen protection | ✓ STALE_SCREEN guard | — n/a | — Blind taps |
| Survives new Xcode releases | ✓ Explicit pairing | ✓ Native | — Breaks often |
| Record / replay with verification | ✓ Visual-hash check | — Manual only | — No |
| App Store screenshots, 1 command | ✓ 1320×2868 + manifest | — Manual resizing | — DIY |
Launch pricing: Pro is $39 instead of $59, and the launch price is locked to your licence forever — every v1 update included. When the countdown ends, it ends.
Forever · no card · no account
One payment · yours forever · all v1 updates included
Launch price ends in --d --h --m --s
Straight talk: the licence is verified offline with public-key cryptography — no account, no telemetry, no “sign in to continue”. If TermPhone doesn't boot your simulator, write to us within 14 days and the Pro payment comes back. And the free tier is genuinely usable — it's how we run our own demos.
v1 is iPhone, done properly. The same engine — terminal graphics + agent layer — takes plug-in device modules next. Statuses below are honest, not aspirational.
Stream, agent layer, multi-device, record/replay, App Store export, graphics + mouse, licensing.
● Shipping nowEmulator module on the same commands — termphone up pixel next to your iPhone sessions.
On the roadmapControl a connected physical phone from the terminal. This is the honest route to real calls and eSIM — simulators can imitate a phone, but only real hardware is on a real network.
On the roadmapmacOS, Windows and Ubuntu environments in the same terminal workspace, driven by the same agent layer.
On the roadmapsimctl + idb). The one-command installer sets up the CLI and the MCP server; termphone up handles device creation and pairing for you.termphone observe / termphone act) and the built-in MCP server with 7 tools. Agents tap elements by name. Before every action, the current screen stamp is checked against the last observation — if the UI moved on, the action stops with STALE_SCREEN instead of tapping the wrong thing.Install free in under a minute. Upgrade to Pro at the $39 launch price before the countdown ends — after that, it's $59, still one-time, just less smart.
$ curl -fsSL https://termphone.com/install.sh | sh
macOS · Xcode required · free tier needs no account