Use the Mobile Terminal

Updated 2026-08-26

Mightty keeps common terminal keys close to the keyboard while still giving you room to read output. Use the direct terminal for short input and the composer for longer prompts.

Use the control bar

The bar above the keyboard includes the keys that terminal programs commonly need:

  • Ctrl, Esc, and Tab for shells, editors, and interactive tools.
  • Paste for sending text from the clipboard.
  • The arrow pad for directional navigation and Enter.
  • Shift and Option for key combinations.
  • The shortcuts button for additional configured actions.

The keyboard button hides or restores the system keyboard. If you often complete shell commands, enable Double tap sends Tab in Settings → Input → Keyboard & Shortcuts.

Select, copy, and find output

Select text in the terminal and adjust the selection before copying it. Use Find from the terminal menu when the output is too long to scan. Copy-processing options under Settings → Input → Copy & Paste can clean terminal formatting when you need plain text for another app.

Compose longer prompts

Tap the message button to open the composer. It is useful when a command or agent prompt needs several lines because you can edit the complete message before sending it to the active shell.

From the composer you can also:

  • choose a photo from your photo library;
  • dictate text with voice input;
  • review the draft and attachments before sending.

Mightty uploads a selected photo to ~/.mightty/uploads/ on the connected host before sending the message. Treat the host as the destination for that file, and remove uploads you no longer need.

Adjust the terminal behavior

The most useful controls are grouped in Settings:

  • Terminal → Behavior & Sessions: enable tmux by default, keep the screen awake, or turn automatic reconnection on or off.
  • Input → Keyboard & Shortcuts: change keyboard behavior and terminal shortcuts.
  • Input → Copy & Paste: choose how copied text and pasted images are handled.
  • Input → Speech: configure voice input.

Start with the defaults and change one behavior at a time. If a shortcut behaves differently inside tmux, remember that tmux may consume the key combination before the program inside it receives the input.