mosh
Remote terminal application that survives roaming and intermittent connectivity, an alternative to interactive SSH.
HN commenters like mosh for keeping remote terminal sessions usable over spotty, roaming or very slow connections,12345 often alongside tmux.678 Complaints are scattered, including no SSH ControlMaster-style multiplexing9, trouble with security-key-backed SSH auth10 and no Windows support in the original.11
Why people recommend it
Bad connections · 3
Keeps terminal sessions usable on spotty, roaming or extremely slow networks.
“I was able to use mosh, so I used w3m (terminal based web browser) on my VPS”
“Also, Mosh shell support for sshing in degraded connection environments!”
Show 1 more
“WebRTC (or mosh) feels much nicer.”
Mobile use · 3
Commenters prefer it for SSH from phones and mobile terminal apps where signal drops.
“I prefer using Mosh”
“You can also setup mosh connection if you expect signal to be frequently lost”
Show 1 more
“an iOS terminal with SSH mosh capabilities”
Remote workflow · 3
Fits terminal setups for working on remote machines, typically together with tmux.
“my setup works just as well on my machine and on any remote machine over ssh or mosh”
“ssh/mosh/tmux to remote servers”
Show 1 more
“mosh handles the bad connection like it does for everything else”
Long-term reliability · 2
One commenter has used it for over a decade and calls it amazing.
“I've been using mosh now for over a decade and it is amazing.”
“highly recommend https://mosh.org/”
Instant echo · 1
Local echo makes typing commands and editing files feel responsive.
“You should check out mosh! Aside from adding roaming support to ssh, it has instant echo”
Caveats and dissent
No multiplexing · 1
It lacks SSH's ControlMaster, so each tab maintains its own connection.
“the thing that drives me nuts about mosh is not having SSH's ControlMaster protocol so I can multiplex.”
Security-key auth · 1
One commenter cannot use it with security-key-backed ed25519-sk SSH keys because of a long-closed issue.
“Would love to use Mosh but https://github.com/mobile-shell/mosh/issues/120”
Windows, scrollback · 1
The author of a QUIC-based clone notes the original never supported Windows and that their clone adds a scrollback buffer.
“og mosh never supported”
Mixed experience · 1
One commenter reports annoying issues when using it to deal with high latency.
“I know MOSH supposedly helps with that, but I had annoying issues with that too.”
Often compared with
Who recommends it in their own words
Threads where it came up
- Mosh in a Lift (2012) 2 mentions
- WorldTUI: I trained a 360M model to pretend to be a terminal 1 mention
- Show HN: Mosh-rs, Mosh rewritten in Rust with scrollback and Windows support 1 mention
- Pi 1.0 1 mention
- VSCode's SSH Agent Is Bananas (2025) 1 mention
- Leaving Linux 1 mention
Also written as Mosh. Data: mosh.json. Quotes are verbatim; the verdict and theme labels are written by a model from these comments, and every clause links to its sources.
All comments 18
“You should check out mosh! Aside from adding roaming support to ssh, it has instant echo”
“the thing that drives me nuts about mosh is not having SSH's ControlMaster protocol so I can multiplex.”
“my setup works just as well on my machine and on any remote machine over ssh or mosh”
“I know MOSH supposedly helps with that, but I had annoying issues with that too.”
“Mosh helps here.”
“I use mosh over WebSockets to have a long lived connection to my home network.”
“Would love to use Mosh but https://github.com/mobile-shell/mosh/issues/120”
“I was able to use mosh, so I used w3m (terminal based web browser) on my VPS”
“mosh handles the bad connection like it does for everything else”
“I prefer using Mosh”
“og mosh never supported”
“ssh/mosh/tmux to remote servers”
“an iOS terminal with SSH mosh capabilities”
“Also, Mosh shell support for sshing in degraded connection environments!”
“highly recommend https://mosh.org/”
“WebRTC (or mosh) feels much nicer.”
“I've been using mosh now for over a decade and it is amazing.”
“You can also setup mosh connection if you expect signal to be frequently lost”