---
title: The Termio server
description: What runs on a machine so sessions outlive the app — how termiod is installed, kept alive, updated in place, and inspected when something looks wrong.
---

Every session runs inside `termiod`, the Termio server, on the machine that owns
it — including the ones on this Mac. The app, the iPhone companion and the CLI
are all *viewers*: they attach to a session and detach from it. Nothing about a
session belongs to the window you were looking at.

That is the whole reason quitting Termio does not kill your agents.

## What it is

`termiod` is a session host, not a window manager. It owns the PTY, keeps the
scrollback, and hands a viewer a snapshot when one attaches. Locally a viewer
reaches it over a Unix socket; remotely the app opens an SSH pipe to the same
binary on the far box. One protocol, both ways — which is why a session on a VPS
behaves like a session here.

Panes, splits and layout are the app's business and never the server's.

## Getting it onto a machine

Adding a box under **Settings ▸ Devices** and pressing **Set Up** copies one
binary into `~/.local/bin` over SSH and starts it. There is no package to
install and no root involved.

```bash
termiod deploy                      # install or update it here, then verify
termiod deploy --host mybox         # same, over your own SSH config
```

`deploy` is the only install path, and it is a reconcile: run it against a box
in any state and it ends in the same one. Termio reads `~/.ssh/config` to find
the host, so a machine you can already `ssh` to needs nothing new. See
[Devices](/docs/devices).

## Keeping it running

```bash
termiod service install    # launchd on macOS, systemd --user on Linux
```

Without a service the server lives as long as your login session. With one it
comes back after a crash and after a reboot, which is what you want on a box you
only ever reach remotely.

## Updating without dropping sessions

A new build replaces the running one **in place**: the process keeps its id and
its PTYs, and the sessions never notice.

```bash
termiod handoff
```

That is also what happens when the app updates itself — the reason a Termio
update does not cost you your running agents.

## Looking at it

Three commands answer nearly every "is it me or is it Termio" question:

| Command | What it tells you |
| --- | --- |
| `termiod status` | What this machine has: the binary, its version, and whether a daemon is answering on the socket. |
| `termiod list` | The sessions the host is holding — add `--host <box>` to ask another machine. |
| `termiod logs` | What the server recorded while nobody was attached. `-f` follows it; `--path` prints the file for a bug report. |

<Callout type="note">
  `termiod` is the server's own command, and separate from the
  [`termio` command-line tool](/docs/cli) the app installs for you. You rarely
  need `termiod` by hand — the app runs these for you — but it is there when a
  box is misbehaving and you want to look rather than guess.
</Callout>

## Stopping it

```bash
termiod stop
```

It declines while a command is still running or a viewer is attached, so a stray
`stop` cannot take an agent's work with it. Sessions end when their process ends,
or when you close them.