VNC for iPhone and iPad, connect to any platform

VNC on iOS has always been the trickier case, Apple Screen Sharing does not exist on iPhone, and many third-party iOS VNC apps focus on plain RFB without TLS, ARD support or saved profiles. SSHive ships RoyalVNC under the hood (the same engine used by Royal TSX on Mac), which supports the full VNC protocol family: ARD authentication for Mac-to-Mac, VeNCrypt + TLS for encrypted RFB, and bare RFB for legacy servers, wrapped in an SSH tunnel from SSHive's own Tunnels UI when you need encryption the VNC server itself does not offer. The UI is built for touch: tap as left-click, two-finger tap as right-click, pinch to zoom, two-finger pan, and a VNC-specific on-screen keyboard that exposes the function keys, modifiers and arrow keys a phone keyboard does not. Free includes 2 concurrent VNC sessions; Pro removes the cap. Universal Purchase with macOS and iPad. No subscription, no data sent to us, if a server you connect to misbehaves, tell us, we will look into it.

VNC is really three protocols in a trench coat: ARD (Apple's extension for macOS Screen Sharing, with its own auth handshake and pixel formats), VeNCrypt-secured RFB (TLS + classic VNC auth), and plain RFB (no encryption, just a password challenge). Most "VNC client" iOS apps speak only one or two; SSHive's RoyalVNC speaks all three and negotiates the best the server offers. This matters in practice because a real fleet is heterogeneous. A typical ops mix is: one Mac mini running headless with Screen Sharing (ARD), three Ubuntu desktops with TigerVNC (VeNCrypt or plain depending on config), an ESXi console (RealVNC variant with strict TLS), a Raspberry Pi with x11vnc (plain RFB). Without a multi-protocol client, you would need three different iPhone apps to cover them all. The gesture model deserves note. VNC clients on touch screens have historically been clumsy because mouse-centric desktops were not designed for fingers. SSHive's approach is to keep the gestures iOS-standard (tap = primary action, two-finger tap = secondary action, pinch to zoom) and add a VNC-specific overlay only for the keyboard. Combined with the pinch-to-zoom on a high-DPI iPhone Pro Max, you can comfortably interact with a 1080p Linux desktop without panning constantly, the iOS gesture is more ergonomic than a tiny soft mouse pointer. Security: VNC has a reputation for being insecure because plain RFB is, in fact, insecure. SSHive treats this seriously. The Tunnels UI is one click away from any VNC profile, if the underlying VNC connection is plaintext, you wrap it in SSH. Credentials (VNC password, ARD username, SSH passphrase for the wrapping tunnel) all sit in the Keychain with biometric gating; no `vncpasswd`-style files lying in your home directory. Host key verification for the SSH-tunnel wrapper uses TOFU like the rest of SSHive, first connection accepts, future connections fail loud on key changes.