HTC ONE M8 terminal app?

[jc1742]

Just replaced my dying HTC G1 with a new HTC ONE M8, found the settings that make me a "developer" (whatever that might mean ;-), but I've had problems finding one important thing that the G1 had: A normal "terminal" app that lets me use it as on ordinary unix/linux box, type "cd", "ls", "vi", and the other usual commands.

Googling doesn't help. Asking about obvious things like "HTC ONE terminal" gets me lots of stuff on rooting the gadget, resetting it to factory, etc., which might all be useful and interesting, but doesn't help me install a terminal app. Looking around in app sources finds similar things, but nothing that looks like a terminal window.

I'm guessing that there is such a thing that works on the HTC One. Why does searching for it turn up all these other things, but nothing that's a working terminal app? With the G1, the same keywords turn up lists of appropriate apps. Anyone know how I might go about finding such a thing for my new gadget?

(Asking about "HTC ONE terminal" at forums.androidcentral.com led me to this forum, which illustrates the problem. Terminals aren't just tools for rooting computers, so why didn't I find what I was looking for here? ;-)

 

[whitelunchbag]

Terminal emulator

My M8 posted this

 

[benny3]

https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...details?id=jackpal.androidterm&token=yKKMH7Ga

 

[jc1742]

Heh, yeah; that's the first thing I tried. I just tried again, and got lots of hits implying that such a thing exists. But they all seem to be comments to run such-and-such in a terminal emulator, or sometimes suggestions to install a terminal emulator. Such things aren't too useful unless they say where you can get such a program, and they never seem to say that. It also seemed not unlikely that one might be pre-installed, but if so, I couldn't guess its name, and none of the apps in the 3x3 dot array icon list (whatever it's called ;-) seems to produce a terminal-like display. There are a bunch of what seem to be "app stores" with "Play" in their name, but typing "terminal" into their search widget gets a "no match" reply. The app-store icon on my old G1 had lots of terminal apps, but they seem well hidden now, unless I can somehow guess a URL, and google doesn't seem interested in returning anything but teasing suggestions that I should use my terminal emulator.

 

[jc1742]

That URL seems to have done the job. Actually, I just typed "play.google.com" to one of the browsers that I've installed, and its search widget accepted "terminal emulator" and showed me a list of them. I did a quick check with a couple of the "Play ..." apps that came installed, and they still say that "terminal emulator" gets no match. Apparently they're specialized, and you need the more general one, for which there seems to be no installed app. But if I can remember that it's just "play.google.com", I can probably find it again.

Thanks for the link.

(I wonder why they decided to hide it? "Play" doesn't seem like a very intuitive name ... ;-)

 

[whitelunchbag]

You don't have the play store on your phone?

My M8 posted this

 

[benny3]

You can also visit the playstore on a PC choose the app you want then install and pick the device you want to install it on and it will install.

 

[jc1742]

You don't have the play store on your phone?

Well, yes and no. There's a "Google" icon that brings up a 4x3 array of icons, 5 of which have names like "Play Music", Play Movies & TV", etc, but none of them lead to a page whose search widget recognizes "Terminal" as a valid search term. When I spotted "play.google.com" in several replies, I typed that into a handy browser, and the page I got accepted "Terminal" and showed me several.

I just classify is as yet another example of the "dumbing down" of the commercial Internet. They think I'm too dumb to understand what a terminal or a command line is, and they're protecting me from exposure to such concepts that are too complex for my sensitive little mind. Or something like that. But I've learned that asking around is often faster than using the big search sites (who also protect my sensitive feelings from such things).

(And after losing the window with this thread, it took an inordinate amount of time to trick this forum into showing it to me again. This is a rather bizarre UI, mostly ads, and leaving it alive seems to eat up 20% to 50% of my cpu, depending on which ads are running. That's a bit of a discouragement to leaving the window open while waiting for replies. But closing it means navigating the maze of pages again, and finding a way out of the loops that are trying to sell me something or get me to change the info in my account page. ;-)

 

[benny3]

AC has its own app which you can subscribe to a individual thread and get real time updates. You can make a shortcut on your homescreen or the playstore.

https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...om.quoord.tapatalkacf.activity&token=zwRRM3hJ

 

[whitelunchbag]

It's the first search result for me

My M8 posted this