Help with Halyard

Halyard is a terminal for persistent remote sessions on Mac, iPhone and iPad. You add your servers — over SSH, or a Docker container running on one — and every session Halyard opens is a tmux session running on that server. Quit the app, close the lid or switch devices, and your shells, builds and AI coding agents are exactly where you left them when you come back. It shows at a glance which agent sessions are working, finished or waiting for you, and can offer to reopen an agent session after its server restarts.

On a Mac, macOS 15 (Sequoia) or later, on Apple silicon or Intel. On iPhone and iPad, iOS and iPadOS 17 or later. It is distributed through the App Store.

The servers you connect to need SSH and tmux 3.0 or newer. Docker is only needed if you want to open sessions inside containers.

• Free version — up to 3 sessions at a time on SSH servers, with a small Volpy notice above the terminal. You can stay on it as long as you like.
• 14-day free trial — everything Pro has, apart from removing the notice: unlimited sessions and Docker containers. You start it yourself, from the welcome screen or the Upgrade sheet, once per Apple Account. It costs nothing and does not turn into a purchase.
• Halyard Pro — a one-time purchase ($24.99 in the US, the local equivalent elsewhere): unlimited sessions, Docker containers, and no notice. One purchase covers your Mac, iPhone and iPad on the same Apple Account. There is no subscription.

Halyard moves to the free version. Nothing you started is closed: every session keeps running on its server, and the ones you have stay listed and usable. You just can’t open a new session while you have 3 or more.

Docker hosts lock: they stay in the list with an Upgrade button, and Halyard stops opening them. The containers and the sessions inside them keep running on the server, and come straight back if you buy Pro.

Sign in to the App Store with the same Apple Account, then open the Upgrade sheet (or the welcome screen) and choose Restore Purchase. Usually it arrives by itself within a moment of launching.

In the free version and during the trial, a small, fixed-height strip above the terminal shows a note about Volpy, our own product. The app fetches it from volpy.co as plain data — a headline, a line of text, an optional small image and a link — and draws it itself. With that request it sends its name and version, the platform, your light or dark theme, the available size, and a random per-install identifier, so we can count impressions and clicks without counting one device twice. It never sends your terminal contents, commands, host names, file names, account details or anything else from your device.

Halyard Pro removes the strip and never requests it. Every version, Pro included, also checks volpy.co about every six hours for an urgent notice about its version, such as a required update. The full details are in the privacy policy.

Only what the strip and the notice check send, described above. There is no account, no sign-in and no analytics SDK. Your hosts, passwords and keys stay on your device, and nothing you type in a terminal leaves it except to the server you are connected to. See the privacy policy.

Halyard needs tmux 3.0 or newer on the server — that is what keeps your sessions alive when you disconnect. Install or update it with the server’s package manager (for example sudo apt install tmux). If you can’t, turn off Use tmux for that server: you get a plain shell instead, which ends when you disconnect.

Docker hosts are part of Pro and the trial. With either, open the server’s settings: once Halyard can list running containers there, it offers a Docker option.

If it says permission was denied, the user Halyard connects as isn’t allowed to use Docker on that server. Add it to the docker group:

sudo usermod -aG docker <user>

Then quit and reopen Halyard so it reconnects with the new group. Shells already open on the server keep their old groups — run newgrp docker in one, or log out and back in — and sessions inside tmux only pick it up once the tmux server restarts.

On a remote session, localhost means the server, not your device — a login link like http://localhost:1455/callback is listening over there. Halyard tells you so instead of opening the wrong machine. Forward the port first (for example ssh -L 1455:localhost:1455 your-server), then open the link, or copy it.

On a Mac, quit Halyard and move it from Applications to the Trash. Its data is in ~/Library/Containers/ai.volpy.halyard; saved passwords and keys are Keychain items named ai.volpy.halyard.ssh-password, which you can delete in Keychain Access if you want nothing left.

On iPhone or iPad, delete the app. The system may keep its Keychain items until you erase the device.

Either way, your sessions are ordinary tmux sessions on your servers and are unaffected. End them there with tmux kill-server if you wish.