Terminal

Every pane can open as a real terminal, full screen on the phone, with a row of keys above the keyboard. This page covers how it attaches to a pane, the key bar and the menu.

Open a terminal

Shell panes open in the terminal when you tap them. For an agent pane, use the chat and terminal switch at the top right of the chat, or long-press the pane and choose Open terminal. Melta remembers the view you used for each pane while the app runs. If you start claude or codex in a shell pane, Melta switches it to chat once the agent is ready.

How it attaches to a pane

Melta asks Herdr to hand it control of the pane, and Herdr draws the pane at the phone's size. The line under the title shows the state: Live, Connecting…, On computer, Paused, Ended or Offline.

• Show on computer in the ⋯ menu selects the pane in Herdr on the computer and gives it back its full size and keyboard. Tap Control Here to take it back.
• Leaving the app. Short app switches keep the pane attached. After about a minute in the background, Melta hands the pane back to the computer and shows Paused, then reattaches when you return. On iOS the system may close the connection instead; Melta reconnects when you come back.
• Connection lost. The phone shows Not connected and reattaches once the computer reconnects.

Swipe up and down to scroll. In a pane this scrolls Herdr's own view of it, and Jump to bottom in the menu returns to the live output.

Fix a word you typed

Tap the word to put the cursor there, then delete or type. To nudge the cursor a few letters, drag sideways anywhere on the terminal: it follows your finger, one letter at a time. In Claude Code's prompt this works across every line of a long message. On Android, the keyboard's own cursor gestures also work, such as sliding along Gboard's space bar.

The terminal moves the cursor with arrow keys, the same as you would on the computer. Programs that use the mouse, like Herdr TUI, get the tap as a click instead.

Copy text

Press and hold a word to select it. Keep your finger down and drag to select more, or drag the blue handles at either end. Then tap Copy, or Select All for the whole screen (in a shell, everything it still holds). A long path or link counts as one word, even when it runs onto the next line.

While text is selected, the screen holds still so the text doesn't move under your finger. New output appears as soon as you copy, tap elsewhere or type. This works in Herdr TUI too.

Herdr TUI and New Shell

The host screen's + menu has two more modes with their own SSH terminal. Herdr TUI runs the full Herdr interface, driven with your prefix key. New Shell opens a plain login shell outside Herdr.

The key bar

From left to right, the bar above the keyboard has:

1. Switch workspace or pane, which opens Jump To. Its badge counts blocked agents.
2. ⇄, which goes to the last pane.
3. The prefix key, in blue, labelled with your prefix (^B by default). It sends your Herdr prefix. Set it in Settings › Herdr prefix to match your Herdr config.
4. Your keys, which scroll sideways. By default: Esc, Tab, ⏎ (Return), Ctrl, Alt, ↑ ↓ ← →, ⇧Tab, ^C, ^D, ^Z, ^L, ^R, the symbols | - ~ / \ ` ' " $, then PgUp, PgDn, Home and End.
5. The keyboard button, which shows or hides the phone's keyboard.

Ctrl and Alt are sticky. Tap one and it lights up. The next key you press, on the key bar or a single character on the phone's keyboard, is sent with it: tap Ctrl, then type c, to send Ctrl+C. The modifier then turns off. Tap it again before pressing anything to cancel.

To reorder, hide or add keys, such as ctrl+g or the text git status, go to Settings › Terminal › Key Bar. See Settings.

The ⋯ menu

• Send ctrl+b, named after your prefix: sends the prefix key to the pane.
• New pane in this tab: opens a fresh shell next to this one and switches to it.
• Show on computer: see above.
• Start Claude here and Start Codex here, for panes without an agent. If the agent first asks something, such as whether to trust the folder, answer it in the terminal.
• Attach image: uploads a photo to the computer and types its path into the pane.
• Paste clipboard, Copy selection, Jump to bottom and Reconnect.
• Close pane: asks first, then ends the process in the pane.

In Herdr TUI and New Shell, only the items that do not depend on a pane are shown.