I wanted the lightest possible way to do mobile dev work using my ZSA Voyager keyboard, and this was it.
The Voyager works great with the iPad Air. I’ve got a ton of custom hardware keybindings, and they all work.
I go back and forth over whether I should have gotten the larger iPad Air, but when I need to see a bunch of stuff on the screen at once the split screen feature is usually sufficient. There’s USB-C splitter lets me use the keyboard and another accessory (power or mic) at once.
Getting the cellular internet on the iPad seemed profligate at the time, but it sure is nice.
For development I mostly use Claude Code. I’m running Claude Code on my Mac Mini at home and connecting via SSH over Tailscale. I’m running it inside tmux, so if I kick off a long running job I can close up the iPad and do something else without fear of interrupting it. My Mac Mini’s files are synced to my main dev computer over a Synology NAS.
The Sennheiser USB lavalier is great for talking to AI apps (always a better interface than typing), although voice-to-text doesn’t work with Termius on the iPad. I may explore whether it works with other terminal apps. If I have a lot to say to Claude Code, I’ll split screen to a text editor and cmd-a, cmd-c, cmd-tab, cmd-v. After I post this I’ll be configuring my Voyager to do that in one keystroke.
Coffee is Ceremony Thesis from Annapolis, MD. Yeti because in order to function as a human being I need the coffee temperature locked in.