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Install on Windows

Termivoa installs on Windows 11 (x64) as one file, pterm.exe, that you download with the GitHub CLI and set up with pterm setup.

  • Windows 11 on x64.
  • Tailscale on the computer and the phone, signed in to the same account.
  • The GitHub CLI (gh), signed in with gh auth login. You need an invite to the private repository.

No administrator rights are needed.

In PowerShell, make a folder, download the beta and run setup:

Terminal window
New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\Termivoa" | Out-Null
cd "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Programs\Termivoa"
gh release download v0.1.0-beta.3 -R intojhanurag/Termivoa -p pterm-windows-amd64.exe -O pterm.exe
.\pterm.exe setup

Then follow Pair your phone.

pterm is not on your PATH. Where these docs say pterm, go to this folder and type .\pterm.exe, for example .\pterm.exe doctor.

  • The binary is not signed. A browser download gets a “downloaded from the internet” mark that makes SmartScreen warn; a gh download does not.
  • Do not put pterm.exe on the Desktop, in Documents or in a Temp folder. OneDrive may move those folders, and setup refuses Temp. The startup tasks run this exact path.

pterm setup adds two Scheduled Tasks (Windows entries that start a program at sign-in) for your account only:

  • Phone Terminal Broker (<user>): the broker, which owns your sessions.
  • Phone Terminal Gateway (<user>): the gateway, which serves the phone page on this computer only (127.0.0.1:8787). It starts 10 seconds after the broker.

Both run as you, at normal priority, never as an administrator. Task Scheduler restarts them if they fail. “Phone Terminal” is the old working name, kept so existing installs keep working.

What Where
Program %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Termivoa\pterm.exe
Data %LOCALAPPDATA%\Phone Terminal
Logs %LOCALAPPDATA%\Phone Terminal\logs\ (broker.log, gateway.log)

With a WSL distro installed, Termivoa offers a WSL bash shell next to PowerShell, which opens in the project folder.

A sleeping computer cannot answer the phone. Check Settings → System → Power.