Basics
Tips & Tricks

Tips and Tricks

Basics

Mouse Support

Enabling mouse support comes in handy when using an iPad without a keyboard as you can freely change panes in tmux or scroll throughout your apps with your fingers, few popular ones include:

TMUX:

set -g mouse on

VIM:

set mouse=a

EMACS:

(xterm-mouse-mode 1)

Serving development website over HTTPS

Fastest way of using HTTPS on remote machines for development is with the Caddy web server. First install it as an executable, but not service, then create Caddyfile with reverse_proxy line like this:

example.com {
  reverse_proxy 127.0.0.1:1313
}

Or start Caddy directly in reverse-proxy mode from CLI:

sudo caddy reverse-proxy --from example.com --to 0.0.0.0:1313

Starting TMUX/Screen on session start

Adding startup commands is as easy as going to Host settings, scrolling to bottom and inserting command we want to use:

tmux a -t session_name
screen -rd session_name

Or anything other that we want to run when starting a new session. It also can be run from Blink command line:

mosh host -- tmux a -t session_name
mosh host -- screen -rd session_name

SSH port forwarding from remote machine to iPad

Forwards connections from a port on a local system to a port on a remote host:

ssh -L 3000:localhost:3000 ssh-host

Blink: Using screen corners

Taping three fingers on the screen will bring a Blink menu in which you can set the Cover, Fill, and Fit setting, adapting Blink to different screens and devices.

  • Cover: Edge to Edge
  • Fill: Space at the Top and Bottom
  • Fit: 5 points on all sides

img

External Display: Apple TV

You can use Apple TV as a second monitor, just start screen share on Apple TV and Blink will use it as second monitor, not just mirroring. This is really cool if you are doing a presentation, or if you are on the couch with your phone and want to have a bigger display!

External Display: Split View

For the external display to work, Blink needs to be an active window on the iPad. A very cool way to do this is to use Split View on the iPad, giving Blink ½ or ¼ of the screen, while the rest can be taken by Safari or anything else you need!

Display: What is Blink Window?

From iPad OS 13, we have multiple windows support inside Blink, and each window can have infinite tabs. Blink Shell Windows

You can also move tabs between the iPad window and External Display window with ⇧ Shift + ⌘ Cmd + O or change focus to the other window using ⌘ Cmd + O.

Keyboard: Separate Keys

By switching off the "Same for both sides" option in Config > Keyboard > ⌥ Option you can use one key as a Meta and the second as a normal ⌥ Option/Alt. It's particularly helpful for users that use languages containing diacritic letters.

Advanced

Inline Images

Blink supports displaying images over SSH when using iTerm2 imgcat. Put it in local .bin folder ($HOME/.bin or any other in your %PATH) and use it as this:

imgcat image.png

NOTE: This does not work in terminal multiplexers (TMUX, GNU Screen) or inside Mosh.

Alternative that works inside every environment, but needs Rust installed is VIU. Install it using Cargo:

cargo install viu

And use:

viu image.png/animation.gif

More information: VIU GitHub Repository

TMUX: Copy/Paste using OSC52

Enabling copy/paste between tmux and iOS needs SSH or Blink Mosh Server.

set -g set-clipboard on
set -ag terminal-overrides "vte*:XT:Ms=\\E]52;c;%p2%s\\7,xterm*:XT:Ms=\\E]52;c;%p2%s\\7"

VIM users can set this to have similar experience to VIM:

bind-key -T copy-mode-vi v send-keys -X begin-selection
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi y send-keys -X copy-selection
bind-key -T copy-mode-vi r send-keys -X rectangle-toggle

How to enable OSC52 support in Mosh?

You need to build Mosh from source with this patch: Support additional OSC 52 clipboard types #1104

Editors

VIM: Copy/Paste between remote machine and iOS

To enable copy/paste you'll need to install ojroques/vim-oscyank and add this line to .vimrc:

autocmd TextYankPost * if v:event.operator is 'y' && v:event.regname is '' | OSCYankReg " | endif"

And enable this setting:

set clipboard& clipboard^=unnamed,unnamedplus

VIM: Exit insert mode without ESC key

Change CapsLock in Blink Settings to Control and press Ctrl(CapsLock) + [ to exit insert mode on iPad keyboards without ESC key.

Emacs: Copy/Paste using OSC52

To enable copy/paste on Emacs, you can install clipetty. See the GitHub repo for the complete documentation, but for basic configuration using use-package, you can add this to your config:

(use-package clipetty
  :ensure t
  :hook (after-init . global-clipetty-mode))

Emacs: Custom Presses

Using the Config > Keyboard > Custom Presses settings you can add new shortcuts. For instance, sending ctrl-space when hitting ctrl-space, as opposed to bringing up iPadOS's emoji menu. Now Emacs cut & paste doesn't need to rely on ALT - x set-mark-command.

Emacs: Change ALT to Meta

Change "Press send" to None and "As modifier" to ESC option in Config > Keyboard > ⌥ Option so you can use it as Meta. From now on ⌥ Option/Alt - x will work as Meta - x.

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