reminal for VS Code

A remote terminal you can open from your phone or any browser.

reminal makes a VS Code terminal one you can pick up from anywhere. Start a build or a coding agent at your desk, then follow along, or type into it, from your phone on the way home. Nothing needs installing on the device in your hand, and there's no SSH server or port forwarding to set up. Each terminal is a reminal session, reached with a link and a PIN.

It works in VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VSCodium and code-server.

In the terminal panel

Choose reminal from the menu beside the + and the new terminal is shared from the moment it opens. You can also make it your default profile.

The cloud icon in the panel's title bar lists the reminal terminals in the window and what each one is doing, with a shortcut at the bottom to open a new one in your current folder.

Right-click a terminal tab for three more actions. Open reminal in This Folder starts a reminal terminal where that one is. VS Code doesn't let an extension take over a shell that's already running, so this is a fresh shell in the same folder, and it asks before closing the old one. Share for a Person copies a join link and a reminal connect line to send to someone, and Share for an AI Agent copies instructions another agent can follow to join.

That second one lets agents work together. Paste the instructions into a second agent's chat and it joins the same live shell, seeing everything the first one has run and typing alongside it. One agent can review or test what another has built, take over a task partway through, or keep an eye on a long job while the first moves on. You can watch it all from your phone.

When a reminal terminal starts, a notification shows its PIN with buttons to copy the link or open it in your browser, and the terminal prints the same link with a QR code for your phone. reminal: Show Link for This Terminal brings it back later.

Know when your agent needs you

When an agent such as Claude Code runs in a reminal terminal, its tab shows how it's getting on: … while it works, ! when it's waiting for you and ✓ when it's finished. A notification lets you know the moment one is waiting, and reminal.statusBar adds a summary to the status bar if you'd like one. This needs reminal 3.16.13 or later.

Leave it running

reminal keeps your computer awake while a session is open, so work carries on after you step away. On a Mac you can even close the lid: closed-lid mode keeps your sessions reachable with the lid shut and nothing plugged in.

reminal settings closed-lid on

It asks for your admin password, since it changes how the Mac sleeps, and reminal settings closed-lid off restores the usual behavior. Running unplugged draws on the battery, and a laptop that's still running is best kept out of a bag.

More from reminal

The extension is one way into reminal, which does a good deal more once it's installed.

From any browser you can see and control the windows on your computer, much like remote desktop but without a VNC client. Sessions outlast the terminal and the connection, the way tmux does, so you can reconnect from anywhere and find everything as you left it. Send the link and PIN to a colleague and you're pair programming in the same shell, with no account needed.

reminal expose 3000 publishes a local web server at a public address guarded by a PIN. reminal copy and reminal paste move a file between two machines with a one-time code. reminal machines lists every computer you own and what's running on each, and reminal integrate gives Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini and other agents an MCP server for reading and typing into your sessions.

Terminal sessions and window mirroring are end-to-end encrypted, nothing needs an open port, and you're free to run your own relay. Exposed ports are the one exception to the encryption, because an ordinary browser visits them; the PIN protects them instead.

Getting started

The extension needs the reminal program. On macOS or Linux:

curl -fsSL https://reminal.app/install.sh | sh

On Windows, in PowerShell:

irm https://reminal.app/install.ps1 | iex

If it isn't installed yet, the extension offers to install it for you in a terminal, where you can answer the installer's questions, and opens a reminal terminal once it's done. It finds reminal on your PATH or wherever the installer put it, even when the editor was launched from the Dock or the Start menu.

Settings

Good to know

• In a remote window (Remote SSH, Dev Containers, code-server), reminal runs on the remote machine, so install it there.
• The badges appear in the terminal tab list and on terminals in the editor area. VS Code doesn't draw them in the compact header it uses when only one terminal is open, or while its own icon, such as the warning after a reload, is on the tab.
• The Share items appear on every terminal tab while any reminal terminal is open, since VS Code doesn't tell an extension which tab was clicked. On an ordinary terminal they offer to open a reminal one instead.

License

AGPL-3.0-or-later, like the rest of reminal.