Termux

Termux is a terminal emulator and Linux environment for Android, written mostly in Java. The app provides the terminal and a minimal set of bootstrap packages, and further software comes from the separate termux-packages repository through pkg or apt, without root. It suits people who want a shell, SSH client, compilers or scripting tools on an Android phone or tablet. Current releases support Android 7 and later, with a reduced build for Android 5 and 6 that gets no package updates.

Settings live in plain key=value files rather than a GUI. The main file is ~/.termux/termux.properties (or ~/.config/termux/termux.properties), which covers the extra-keys row above the soft keyboard, bell behaviour, cursor style and blink rate, scrollback size (terminal-transcript-rows), back-key and volume-key behaviour, and fullscreen mode. Colors go in ~/.termux/colors.properties and a custom font in ~/.termux/font.ttf, and termux-reload-settings applies changes without restarting.

Multiple sessions run side by side and are listed in a drawer that slides in from the left. With a hardware keyboard, Ctrl+Alt+C creates a session, Ctrl+Alt+N and Ctrl+Alt+P switch between them, Ctrl+Alt+U selects a URL from the screen and Ctrl+Alt+plus or minus changes the font size. Optional add-on apps extend it: Termux:API exposes Android features to the shell, and Termux:Boot, Termux:Widget, Termux:Float, Termux:Styling and Termux:Tasker cover startup scripts, home-screen shortcuts, a floating window, themes and Tasker integration.

There are no split panes; tmux inside Termux is the usual answer. Font ligatures are not supported. Sixel and iTerm2 inline image support was merged into the source in September 2026 but is not yet in a tagged release (the latest stable is v0.118.3). The README warns that Android 12 and later may kill background processes beyond a phantom-process limit, which can end sessions unexpectedly. APKs from F-Droid, GitHub and Google Play are signed with different keys, so the app and its plugins must all come from the same source, and the Play Store build is a separate experimental branch with missing features.