Meows: monitoring and managing Linux servers from Android over SSH
Posted here as a one-off in General with permission from AnthonySmith.
I'm the developer of Meows. I wanted to check and manage my Linux servers from Android using the SSH access I already had, without installing a monitoring daemon on each VPS.
The Android device opens the SSH connection itself, either directly or through a bastion host you configure. There is no Meows relay in the connection path and no extra management port to expose.
Earlier compatibility work benefited from system reports shared by people on LowEndTalk, including OpenVZ, LXC, Alpine, ARM and older-kernel environments. Those reports helped me improve metric collection beyond the systems I could test myself.
The dashboard shows CPU, memory, disk, network, uptime and connection status. You can view the last 1, 2 or 5 minutes of history and check related processes, mount points or network interfaces where the data is available. While monitoring is running on your Android device, Meows can notify you about resource-usage thresholds and SSH disconnections or reconnections.
The screenshots were taken on a Pixel 5 in Dark mode. You can select Dark under Settings → Theme Mode. Meows uses Android's system color palette, so switching to Dark does not necessarily reproduce the same warm colors on every phone.
There is an interactive SSH terminal, along with Docker container controls and live logs. Docker operations use SSH and the permissions of that account, so you do not need to expose the Docker remote API. Local and remote SSH tunnels are supported too.
Meows Lens lets you work with text in terminal output and Docker logs. For example, you can select a domain and choose DNS A to look up its addresses, as shown below. WHOIS and TLS certificate queries are available as well. Recognizing text does not execute a command on its own.
SSH credentials are encrypted on the Android device with AES-GCM, with keys managed by Android Keystore. Meows has no analytics, telemetry or advertising SDKs, and no Meows backend receives monitoring data. Optional Google Drive backups are encrypted on the device before being uploaded.
Meows requires Android 14 or newer. It is a US$4.99 one-time purchase on Google Play, with no subscription, ads or in-app purchases. Local pricing and availability are shown by Google Play.
Questions about how it works are welcome. If a metric looks wrong on one of your systems, the distro, architecture and a screenshot would help me investigate. Please remove credentials and other sensitive details before sharing.
Comments
How do we verify that monitoring data never reaches the Meows backend?
Meows has no backend. Your Android device connects directly to the SSH server or bastion you configure. Monitoring data is processed on your device, and the history stays there.
You can inspect Meows' outgoing connections with PCAPdroid, filtered to Meows, while monitoring is running. In a separate test, you can use a firewall to allow only your configured SSH destination, plus DNS if needed, and check that core monitoring still works.
Optional Google Drive backups are encrypted on your device, stored in your own Google Drive account, and do not include monitoring history. Network lookup tools make separate connections when you use them.
The privacy policy and user guide explain the data flows, local storage, and backup contents:
Privacy policy
User guide
It looks nice, I'll definitely take a look at this later and feed back!
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Thanks! Looking forward to your feedback
Do you limit country for Meows?
https://microlxc.net/
which country is your Google Play account set to
Cool app, will test it out.
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Thanks! Let me know how it goes.
Meow
I moved all my websites to Carrd, and cancelled all my idlers.
Save the earth, don't idle.
😸
Meow
I moved all my websites to Carrd, and cancelled all my idlers.
Save the earth, don't idle.
unrelated to the topic: why is OP a Pleb?
DM us for private tracker invite.
New user.
And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.
Joined 2022, but only become active recently.
Username greyed out like that seems to imply they are banned, but their profile pic is not typical of a banned user.
Man we would need some time to actually get used to the new system.
DM us for private tracker invite.
I define 'new user' based on number of posts, not join date. User was active at 3AM, so unlikely to be banned. Mouseover doesn't change color on his name, but maybe it doesn't for OP. I dunno. I'm just happy the gay pulsing dinosaurs can be turned off.
And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.
Sigh, we are still rocking Android 10 and 11.
We accept Karma donations for the last flan. 🍮 affbrr
Haha,amall world! Good to see you here too, and thanks again for the system info you shared on LET. Is updating to Android 14 or newer an option on those devices?
just needed a little karma. now instead of 'pleb' its 'user' 😸
Sigh, every device made in Hong Kong never seems to get Android updates ever.
Whatever version they’re released with, is the version they’ll stay on when they die.
A device is considered dead when its battery is twice the size.
We accept Karma donations for the last flan. 🍮 affbrr
This project is pretty cool, but why not run something like open observe and uptime kuma? That way the servers provide the information and you just need to access it from one place.
Sir, this is lowend forum. Many of us still using device from 10 years ago
No LineageOS available for it?