Whip

Run your Herdr workflow from Android.
Monitor and chat with remote agents, work in their terminals, and move files over SSH from a native mobile interface.

Early Access: join the Whip Community, wait a moment for access to propagate, then use the Google Play link above.

Watch the Whip launch video

Whip gives Herdr a touch-friendly Android interface without exposing Herdr itself to the network or requiring changes on the host. It connects to your machine over SSH—directly or through saved jump hosts, ideally over Tailscale—and rebuilds the management experience as native screens. You can watch the whole herd, prompt an agent through a native chat composer, browse remote files, or attach to a full terminal when you need it.

The app separates connection management from daily supervision: Hosts manages saved SSH endpoints and exposes their live Herdr state, Herd merges connected agents into a scoped attention queue, Terminal keeps open pane sessions within reach, and More holds security, notification, appearance, and terminal preferences.

Whip is not developed, maintained, or endorsed by the Herdr project or its authors.

Manage every host See live connection state, latency, and saved authentication at a glance.	Watch the whole herd Merge open hosts into one attention queue, then scope it to a host or space.
Work from anywhere Keep remote terminal tabs warm, use mobile controls, and open discovered web links or remote files in one tap.	Chat naturally Prompt a remote agent from the native multiline composer with Android keyboard, suggestion, and voice-input support.
Bring the filesystem with you Browse, sort, upload, download, edit, delete, or preview the terminal's remote files over SFTP.	Reach private hosts safely Build nested jump-host routes and opt into SSH agent forwarding without placing the private key on the server.
Make Whip yours Place translucent app surfaces over a custom background, then tune alerts, speech, security, navigation, and terminal behavior.

Screenshots were captured from the current ARM64 release build on a Pixel 9 Pro.

• Monitor every open host in one native attention queue, with per-host and per-space scopes.
• See working, blocked, done, idle, and unknown agents, including their host and space context.
• Keep connected hosts first and order them by the same agent-status priority as the Herd queue; see each host's agent count, Herdr protocol, measured latency, and jump-host route.
• Move through Herdr hosts, spaces, tabs, panes, and agents without living in a terminal.
• Create, focus, rename, split, zoom, inspect, and close space resources, including swipe-to-close Herd tabs.
• Launch agents and chat through a native multiline composer that works with Android keyboards, including Gboard voice input and suggestions.
• Run editable commands from the Herd screen and reuse the same persistent input history available in the terminal.

• Attach to any selected pane through an immersive, xterm-compatible terminal.
• Open a plain SSH login shell when Herdr is stopped, unavailable, or not installed yet.
• Keep multiple terminal surfaces warm while switching or swiping between tabs, with a buffered composer, ANSI colors, modifier keys, touch scrolling, Page Up/Down, selection, live resizing, and configurable appearance.
• Reuse persistent input history, copy previous commands with a long press, and configure fullscreen behavior, volume-key and double-tap actions, and the number of cached xterm surfaces.
• Scan terminal scrollback for web links and open local or LAN services in the in-app browser through an on-demand SSH tunnel.
• Recover open control connections after network changes and app resume without restarting healthy sessions.

• Browse the active terminal's current directory over SFTP, remember a location per terminal, and sort by name, modification time, or size.
• Upload, download, edit, or swipe-delete remote files; preview code, text, Markdown with remote links and images, raster images, SVG, video, and sandboxed HTML.
• Upload a photo, file, camera capture, or clipboard image to the host and paste its remote path into the terminal composer.

• Import, inspect, copy, remove, or generate SSH keys, and reuse them from a biometric-protected global keychain.
• Route connections through nested, OpenSSH-compatible jump hosts and optionally forward a profile's key as an SSH agent without copying the private key to the server.
• Verify every direct and jump-host connection against a global known-hosts list, prompting for unknown fingerprints and rejecting changed host keys.
• Automatically save each host's password or private-key credential with Android Keystore and encrypted, device-authenticated Block Store recovery.
• Keep several named Herdr hosts open and switch between their live sessions.

• Receive local notifications, vibration, and optional speech when an agent becomes blocked or finishes.
• Set the duration of background agent alerts, dismiss active alerts by returning to Whip, and customize terminal gestures, controls, history, fonts, and cached sessions.
• Use the app in English or Traditional Chinese, with system, light, GitHub Light, dark, and Tokyo Night appearance options.
• Choose an app background image and optionally layer experimental translucent glass bars, rows, controls, and navigation over it.

The recommended installation is through the Google Play Early Access program. Before using the Google Play link, you must join the Whip Community and wait a moment for your membership to propagate. Google requires 12 closed testers to remain enrolled for 14 days before the app can be released publicly.

Signed ARM64 APKs are also published as normal latest releases on GitHub Releases. They use the project's existing release key and include a SHA-256 checksum alongside the APK.

1. Read the security policy and privacy notes.
2. Install through Google Play, or download whip-arm64.apk from the latest GitHub release.
3. Allow installation from the app that downloaded the APK, then open Whip.
4. Make the Herdr host reachable over SSH, preferably through a Tailnet you trust. An otherwise private destination can be reached through a saved jump host.(Normal SSH host without herdr is also supported)

Whip supports Android 7.0 and newer (minSdk 24). The current direct APK distribution targets 64-bit ARM Android devices. Keep using the same distribution source when updating: Google Play may re-sign store builds through Play App Signing, so Android can require an uninstall when switching between Play and GitHub packages.

You need an SSH server on a laptop or server reachable from the phone. If Herdr is already installed, confirm the same connection outside Whip first:

ssh user@laptop.tailnet.ts.net 'herdr status server --json'

Then in Whip:

1. Tap Add your first host.
2. Enter the Tailscale DNS name or 100.x.y.z address, SSH user, and password or private key. You can import, paste, or generate an Ed25519 key in the app.
3. Leave Command as herdr, or enter its absolute path if it is not in the non-interactive SSH PATH.
4. Choose the Herdr session name and connect.
5. On first connection, compare the displayed SSH fingerprint with the host through an independent trusted channel, then choose Trust host. Whip refuses a changed key on later connections.

Whip saves the credential after you save or connect to a host, enabling one-tap reconnects. Host profiles can also reuse a key from More → Global SSH keychain.

For a destination that is not directly reachable, save and connect to the outer host first. Edit the destination, select that profile under Jump host, and connect. Jump hosts can themselves use another saved jump host; each hop keeps its own authentication, host-key verification, and optional agent-forwarding setting. Manage trusted fingerprints under More → Known SSH hosts.

If Herdr is not installed yet, Whip still keeps the SSH connection open. From the offline host screen, choose Open SSH shell and install or troubleshoot Herdr yourself; Whip never installs software on the host.

Whip accepts Herdr releases that report protocols 17 through 20 and rejects other protocol versions to avoid sending incompatible commands. The About Whip screen shows both sides of the active connection.

Whip connects from Android to the configured SSH host, either directly or through its saved jump-host chain. There is no Whip-operated relay service, and Herdr remains bound to the host as usual. Strict known-host verification applies to every hop.

Native screens read snapshots and live events from Herdr's local API sockets through the authenticated SSH connection. Actions use the same structured API, while each open pane terminal uses Herdr's client-protocol socket for live input, resize, scroll, and render frames. The remote file manager and terminal attachments use SFTP on that connection. Links found in terminal scrollback open directly when they are public; loopback and private-network addresses are forwarded through SSH first.

An unknown server key requires explicit fingerprint approval before Whip stores it in the device-wide known-hosts list. A changed key is rejected until you investigate it and deliberately forget the old entry. See SECURITY.md for the current security posture and PRIVACY.md for the data flow and on-device storage details.

Whip uses Expo SDK 57 with a custom Android development build. It cannot run in Expo Go because SSH, Android Keystore, and the patched PTY stream use native modules.

On NixOS, the included development shell provides Node.js 22, JDK 17, and the required Android SDK and NDK versions. Start Metro in one terminal, in offline mode with Whip's explicit development-client scheme and a LAN bind so the USB-reversed IPv4 endpoint works:

nix develop
npm ci
npm start -- --scheme whip --host lan --offline

Then connect an ARM64 device and build only its architecture from a second development shell:

nix develop
adb reverse tcp:8081 tcp:8081
ORG_GRADLE_PROJECT_reactNativeArchitectures=arm64-v8a npm run android -- --no-bundler

If the development client does not open the project automatically, launch the USB-forwarded localhost URL with Whip's scheme:

adb shell am start -W \
  -a android.intent.action.VIEW \
  -d 'whip://expo-development-client/?url=http%3A%2F%2Flocalhost%3A8081'

On other systems, install Node.js 22, JDK 17, Android SDK Platform 36, Build Tools 36.0.0, NDK 27.1.12297006, and CMake 3.22.1, then use the same npm and adb commands with ANDROID_HOME set.

See DEBUG.md for the complete emulator and physical-device loop.

After authenticating and initializing the Expo project:

npx eas-cli build --profile development --platform android
npx eas-cli build --profile preview --platform android

The development profile creates an Expo development client. The preview profile creates an installable APK.

The manually triggered Publish Android app bundle GitHub Actions workflow builds a signed ARM64 .aab and uploads it through EAS Submit. Its default production-draft profile leaves the release in Google Play Console for manual review; the internal profile publishes it to internal testers.

Before the first run, create a Google Play service account with Play Console access and an Expo access token, then configure these GitHub repository or google-play environment secrets:

• ANDROID_UPLOAD_KEYSTORE_BASE64: the base64-encoded Play upload keystore
• ANDROID_UPLOAD_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD
• ANDROID_UPLOAD_KEY_ALIAS
• ANDROID_UPLOAD_KEY_PASSWORD
• GOOGLE_PLAY_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_JSON: the complete service-account JSON document
• EXPO_TOKEN

For example:

base64 -w 0 /path/to/upload-keystore.jks | gh secret set ANDROID_UPLOAD_KEYSTORE_BASE64
gh secret set ANDROID_UPLOAD_KEYSTORE_PASSWORD
gh secret set ANDROID_UPLOAD_KEY_ALIAS
gh secret set ANDROID_UPLOAD_KEY_PASSWORD
gh secret set GOOGLE_PLAY_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_JSON < /path/to/google-play-service-account.json
gh secret set EXPO_TOKEN

Increment versionCode in android/app/build.gradle for every Play upload, commit the release, and start a draft upload with:

gh workflow run publish-play.yml -f submit_profile=production-draft

npx expo-doctor
npx tsc --noEmit
npm run lint
npm test -- --runInBand
npx expo export --platform android

The SSH bridge is maintained in packages/react-native-ssh-sftp. The root dependency uses that local package; do not edit or patch its symlink under node_modules.

• Read CONTRIBUTING.md before opening a pull request.
• Ask usage and design questions in GitHub Discussions.
• Use the issue forms for reproducible bugs and scoped feature requests.
• Follow the Code of Conduct.
• Review the roadmap for current priorities.

Feedback is especially useful around Android device compatibility, real-world Herdr workflows, terminal ergonomics, and safe SSH trust UX.

Whip's React Native and Expo code is designed to be portable to iOS, but I do not have a Mac or an Apple Developer account to build, test, sign, and publish an iOS release. If you have iOS development experience and access to the required Apple hardware and developer tools, community help with validating the native dependencies, preparing an iOS build, testing it on real devices, and working toward a TestFlight or App Store release would be greatly appreciated. Please start a discussion or open an issue if you would like to help.

Whip learned from Voltius during the early stages of development. We are grateful to the Voltius maintainers and contributors for sharing their work.

Whip is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later.