Rust · hybrid mobile app · iOS 17+
Reach a VM running on your Mac, PC or NAS at full speed — or boot a real Linux kernel on the phone itself, offline.
wisq
Two hand-written clients built for a phone — VNC and SPICE, no library between them and the wire: compressed encodings so it stays usable on cellular, and a touch model that actually hits small buttons.
An interpreted RISC-V machine boots Linux to a login prompt in a fraction of a second — around 160 million guest instructions a second. No JIT, so nothing about it fights the platform, and nothing about it needs a jailbreak.
UTM is excellent, and wisq borrows from its touch design. But iOS grants executable memory only to development-signed apps, so emulating a desktop OS on the phone is interpreted and an order of magnitude slow. That is a platform ceiling, not a code-quality one.
| Aspect | UTM SE | wisq |
|---|---|---|
| Execution | local QEMU, interpreted | on the host — or a purpose-built local interpreter |
| Speed | very slow (no JIT on iOS) | network-bound remote · ~1 s to a Linux shell locally |
| App Store | grey area, rule 4.7 | network client + interpreter, both clean |
| License | GPL (QEMU) | no QEMU inside, so no copyleft to carry |
It prints a wisq:// link per network interface — and a QR code when qrencode is installed. It also announces itself over Bonjour.
Opening the link on the iPhone lands directly in the import screen, address and token filled in, already querying.
Powered off? The agent boots it, wisq waits for the console and resolves the endpoint late — the port moves between boots.