Show HN: Trustmux – Lightweight Secure Daemon for Mobile Shell Access

I'm Dustin Kirkland, author of Byobu[1]. I built Trustmux[2] to solve a personal problem: secure, encrypted access to my tmux[3] and Byobu sessions from my phone, without the pain of other mobile shell approaches.I run long-lived shells, Claude, and other sessions in the background on my workstation, and I needed to check in from mobile — securely, with real TLS certificates and Tailscale-backed privacy, not some insecure workaround.Why not SSH / Mosh / Claude Mobile?- SSH/Mosh: Synchronous connection state is brutal on mobile. Latency, network handoffs between WiFi and cellular, laggy UX — neither felt designed for how people actually use phones.
- Claude Mobile: Great for Claude, but locked to Claude. I wanted tool flexibility — shell commands, multiple code assistants, whatever's running in my tmux session.The key insight behind Trustmux: mobile terminal access needs to be asynchronous, not synchronous. Connect, run a command, disconnect — without maintaining fragile connection state the whole time.TrustmuxA lightweight daemon that provides access to your tmux or Byobu sessions as a secure PWA (Progressive Web App). Real TLS certificates, encrypted end-to-end. Two deployment options:- Tailscale: Automatic cert provisioning via tailscale serve, zero-trust networking, seamless pairing with a 6-digit code. Your workstation binds to your Tailscale IP — private, encrypted, no port forwarding.
- Direct networking: Or, you can run Trustmux have it bind to your local network address and handle the port forwarding yourself.
- Self-managed: You can use Tailscale's certificate provisioning, or bring your own certificate, or use self-signed certs too.I've been running this in production on my own workstation for a while now. I recently flew to Australia and was able to keep nudging my jobs along back home, from somewhere over the Pacific with 700ms of latency and it was a like a dream come true!InstallationAvailable on Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora development repositories, plus pip, Homebrew, and PPA:pip install trustmux
# or
brew tap dustinkirkland/trustmux
brew install trustmux
# or via PPA
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:byobu/ppa && sudo apt install trustmuxQuick Start (3 commands)trustmux enable # start at login
trustmux start # fire up the daemon
trustmux pair # generate pairing URL + 6-digit code (will show a qr code if qrencode is installed)Open the URL on your phone browser, enter the code, tap "Add to Home Screen." Done.Key Design Points- Asynchronous by design: Connect, run commands, disconnect. No laggy synchronous state to babysit.
- Real encryption: TLS certificates (real or self-signed), no compromises. Tailscale handles the network privacy layer (unless you want setup your firewalls and port forwards).
- Lightweight mobile app: It's a PWA -- just a web interface.
- Works offline: The UI shell is cached; reconnects silently when you're back online.
- True multiplexing: Full access to all your tmux panes, windows, and sessions. Type, attach, detach — all from your phone.
- Tool-agnostic: Use Claude, any other code assistant, shell commands — whatever you want in your tmux sessions.Under the Hood- Implemented in python, talks directly to tmux via libtmux, streams live terminal output asynchronously (no polling)
- WebSocket-based updates keep the UI responsive even on slow connections
- Uses Tailscale for network privacy (or bring your own network and/or cert)
- Lightweight daemon — negligible CPU/memory overhead
- PWA architecture: offline-capable, installable, updates silently in the backgroundThe code is at https://github.com/dustinkirkland/byobu (trustmux is part of Byobu, GPLv3). The "tmux" at the end of "Trustmux" honors the "tmux" project and the awesome library that is libtmux, but Trustmux/Byobu are not affiliated with the Tmux project.[1] https://byobu.org
[2] https://trustmux.dev
[3] https://tmux.us