Blink Shell, Build & Code for Android

I like the app and what it does. And I don’t really have a problem with a yearly subscription of $20 for the full version, I am not against subscriptions per se. I am also ok with the free version being limited in some way (including by a nag-screen) - that is after all how you evaluate before purchasing. But I have to say, the way that the developers have implemented the nag-screen to upgrade is a first for me. So much so that this is the first review I have ever made in the AppStore and this nag-screen implementation has turned me off the app so much that I will not be subscribing. This may not be a problem for everyone. But saying “there is a nag-screen, no big deal” does not give the full picture. They are transparent that the nag-screen will come up “up to a max of 3x per day”. What they don’t say is that there is a timer on the nag-screen that interrupts what you are doing for a significant time: 20seconds perhaps? Worse, if you “shake your device to fill this up quicker” the timer is supposed to be shorter but there really is not way to tell if that is so. As long as it counts down clearly, 5 seconds I could live with. Maybe even 10. But the timer as it is is just too random and long - and being asked to “shake to fill” is just juvenile… If the developers do not want to limit the app in other ways (only offer a subset of features?) my suggestion is to change that timeout to allow a limited “give me 5min” holds before it is forced (I would not be happy if I had a time critical situation and being forced to pause for 20sec). And rather than a “shake” prompt, my $0.02 is to just change it into a “take a break, it is better for you anyway” count down the seconds message…

When I saw the visual studio support I thought: "Wow, this is just amazing!" but when I saw the 20USD a year... that kills a lot of the purpose of using this. So, will have to think about it before using this instead of iSH (which is free)

I recently setup a Linux box on my network to work as a server. My ultimate goal is to use this mostly from the terminal. I’ve been setting up connecting to the shell from different devices, and started looking at SSH capable clients. Blink was and option, and there were others, too. No real surprise. After going through some online reviews and doing some reading, I went with Blink. At first I was confused by the basic terminal Blink presented, but then I started typing and got it. Within seconds I was able to connect to my target device, and understand the interface Blink provides. Well done.

This is the best shell of all shells available in iOS. Worth paying $20/year to support this shell. I’ve used this shell every single day for the last year.

And the devs keep making it better and better