Show HN: Trustmux – Async tmux from your phone, now in Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora

I'm Dustin Kirkland, author of Byobu. I recently flew to Australia and kept nudging my Claude, Codex, and Bash jobs along back home from somewhere over the Pacific, at 700ms of latency.

That's what Trustmux is for: secure, asynchronous access to your tmux or Byobu sessions from your phone.

I first posted this in June and since then there have been many point releases, lots of new features and testing, and a growing base of users. It's now packaged in Ubuntu 26.10, Debian, Fedora, and Chainguard OS.

Why not SSH, Mosh, or Claude Mobile?

- SSH/Mosh: a live, synchronous connection is brutal on a phone. Latency and WiFi-to-cellular handoffs make it laggy and fragile. - Claude Mobile: great for Claude, but I wanted access to whatever is running in my tmux session: shells, Claude, other code assistants.

Trustmux is async by design. Connect, look, type a command, disconnect, with no fragile connection state to babysit.

Security: TLS with real certificates, end to end. Uses Tailscale (cert provisioning via tailscale serve, no port forwarding) optionally, bind to your own network address, or bring your own or self-signed certs. Two security experts reviewed the design and I implemented their recommendations. More scrutiny is very welcome.

Quick start:

  trustmux enable
  trustmux start
  trustmux pair   # shows a QR code if qrencode is installed

Open the URL on your phone, enter the 6-digit code, and add it to your home screen. It's a PWA, so there's no app store.

Install: apt, dnf, pip install trustmux, or brew tap dustinkirkland/trustmux && brew install trustmux

Under the hood: Python, libtmux, WebSockets, Tailscale, and no polling. The UI shell is cached for offline use. Part of Byobu, GPLv3. Trustmux isn't affiliated with the tmux project.

https://trustmux.dev https://github.com/dustinkirkland/byobu https://pypi.org/project/trustmux/