Dex

Personal project · in development

A coding environment
for Android.

Terminals, files, Git, GitHub pull requests and Claude Code — running on the phone itself, or on your own computers over SSH.

Laid out for one thumb. Tabs at the bottom, what's open in each tab in a strip above them, and the machine you're on as a chip at the top.

See what it does Build it
The Dex terminal on a phone, showing the welcome message and the bottom tab bar.

Four tabs, one thumb

Everything sits behind the bar at the bottom, where your thumb already is.

The Dex terminal tab. The Dex file tree, with Git status on each entry. Claude Code conversations inside Dex. The Git tab, with changes and pull requests.

Terminal

  • Several terminals per machine, switched from the strip above the tabs.
  • An extra keys toolbar — ESC, CTRL, ALT, arrows — above the keyboard.
  • The keyboard opens only when you tap the terminal, so switching tabs doesn't pop it up.
  • Terminals keep running in the background. The notification can hold a wake lock, so long jobs survive the screen going off.

Files

  • A tree of the workspace folder with Git status on every file and folder: changed, added, untracked.
  • Text opens in an editor with syntax highlighting, line numbers, wrapping, undo and redo.
  • Images, video, audio and PDFs open in their own viewers.
  • On an SSH host, upload and download with progress.

Claude Code

  • Chats with Claude Code, running on the machine the workspace is on.
  • Pick the model, the effort, and the permission mode — ask before edits, accept edits, auto, or bypass.
  • Find text in a chat, and search past conversations.
  • Tap a file Claude mentions and it opens; go back and you're in the chat again.
  • A notification when Claude replies or asks permission while you're elsewhere.

Git & pull requests

  • The repository's changes, with a diff for each file. Stage, unstage, discard, commit, push, pull.
  • Switch and create branches.
  • GitHub pull requests for the workspace repo, with filters — read one, review it, merge it, or open a new one.
  • Git runs on the machine the workspace is on, not on the phone.

Cycling through the tabs — tap one to take over.

Your machines, from your pocket

The hosts in your ~/.ssh/config open as workspaces. The phone and any number of SSH hosts stay connected at once — switch between them from the chip at the top.

  • One shared SSH connection per host, so files, Git and Claude never ask you to log in twice.
  • Create and manage SSH keys inside the app.
  • A command palette to open files and run commands.
  • A switcher showing everything open across every tab — swipe up to reach it.
▣ This phone local Linux prefix
⬡workstationone SSH connection
⬡gpu-boxone SSH connection
⬡serverone SSH connection
Files, Git, pull requests and Claude all run on whichever machine the workspace is on.

Not only phones

On tablets and Samsung DeX, Dex lays itself out like a desktop IDE — the file tree beside your work, the terminal below it.

Getting started

  1. Install the APK

    Dex needs Android 7 or later on a 64-bit ARM phone. The app id is com.dex, so it installs next to Termux rather than replacing it.

  2. Open it

    The first start unpacks a small Linux system and walks you through a tour, which you can watch again later from the workspace sheet.

  3. Add your machines

    Put a host in ~/.ssh/config, or use Add or edit SSH hosts from the workspace chip. Tap the host, log in once in the terminal that opens, and files, Git and Claude follow you there.

Building from source

Dex builds with the JDK that ships inside Android Studio.

export JAVA_HOME="/Applications/Android Studio.app/Contents/jbr/Contents/Home"
./gradlew :app:assembleDebug

APKs land in app/build/outputs/apk/debug/.

Dex is a personal project and the app repository is private for now, so there's no public download yet.