Prompt 3

I didn’t see news about Panic making a successor to Prompt 2, I just saw it on the App Store one day and decided to give it a shot. Being a Panic app, I had some pretty high expectations for it, above other apps. But this app doesn’t even meet the bare minimum of what I’d expect from any random app, let alone to go above and beyond as expected from Panic (I am a long time customer of Transmit, Coda, and Nova). Subscription fuss aside (thank you for putting in a lifetime purchase option!), this app frequently crashes, has strange bugs (e.g. when connecting to a server with latency of around 200ms, every key press happens twice. Until you make another connection in a new tab and go back, then it’s temporarily fixed), and has a strange design — who thought the tab bar at the top of the Home Screen was shippable??? It’s so ugly! Other design tidbits / nitpicks: - Press the “Info” button (with a weird icon btw) on the Home Screen and you get a full-screen sheet with just 3 options. You could literally play a game of tic-tac-toe in the wasted space. Why is this not just a dropdown menu?? - On launch there is like a 50% chance the search bar will have a black (light mode) or white (dark mode) box outline around it. I don’t know why, but there’s no way to get rid of it apart from closing all tabs. - Go to settings and look at the icons closely. You’ll notice they all have different alignments, different rounded corners, different designs. No consistency whatsoever. Some are just straight up imported from Prompt 2 / Coda mobile. - Speaking of imported things, the PIN code entry is unchanged and is an iOS 7 throwback on every launch (or when your Face ID fails). Oh yeah, and the passcode settings page has a weird padding on the top and the background is different. Just because why not. - If you enable Connection Keeper and click on an entry, you get some usable UI… I guess. The text at the bottom doesn’t even have padding and it looks like it was made in SwiftUI in 10 minutes (maybe less?) - To end it off, the app will sometimes randomly persist a (1) or (2) badge (to indicate active connections), even when they are all closed. The only way to fix it is to make the app crash, which is pretty easy — just connect to a server with a high latency, and eventually it will crash. Sometimes it even crashes on first connection! But hey, at least the badge is cleared. However, it’s not all bad. There are at least two things I like which makes the app a 2-star and not a 1-

Wasn’t able to get a reply to a couple of support requests in the last two weeks.

I own a perpetual license for Prompt 2. Apparently you want $100 from me now? Haha. Prompt 2 works fine for now, and I’ll search for reasonably priced alternatives.

Save server? Crashes. Paste key? Crashes. Use most features? Crashes.

Not long after paying for "Prompt 2" which was marketed as a perpetual license with upgrades, it developed a severe, app-breaking bug where the terminal display would get vertically out of 'sync' with the character data. Prompt support indicated that this bug would be fixed in a future version. Turns out the future version was Prompt 3, a paid upgrade and VERY expensive. So the app basically never worked for me an now I have to pay again to fix it? Very well: you have successfully swindled me. But you won't do it a second time. I would attempt to get a refund but months have passed and its too late now.

Works on ipad screen, will not open from external monitor. If moved to the external monitor, quits/crashes/disappears from screen on connection attempt.

Beware of how much time you spend adding your servers, as they will all just randomly disappear, despite ALL devices having the same server list. My advice is turn off panic sync first then manually enter your servers into each device. Just keep sync off. This is not the first time we have seen this bug from panic as it brings back all of those horrible memories of the Transmit/Coda syncing issues.

I bought Prompt 2 a long time ago for a high price. They advertised it as "pay once a good price and have it forever," so I trusted them. I was happy with the app, but a few years later, they started to release updates very rarely. A year without security updates made me think I needed an alternative app. Next, they just deleted the app from AppStore, and it will stop working on a major iOS update one day. That will likely happen to the Prompt 3 and next version too. They decided to sell it again as Prompt 3, promising a lifetime license again? I moved to Shellfish, and the developer's efforts have made it excellent and much more feature-rich and I won’t come back to Prompt 3, 4, 5..

I’m giving this 3 stars instead of 1 just out of my long-term loyalty to Panic’s amazing software, and my hope that they’ll fix the issues. But as it is, Prompt 3 is unusable for me. I think the problems started when I imported a color palette from the Mac version. Now, even after switching back to a default palette, the terminal window is just black-on-black. The only reason I can tell it’s working at all is that some of the text has white underlines. Then after a few seconds, the app crashes. I’m just glad I still have Prompt 2. I’ll try the app again in a few months and maybe it will be better. I just wish they’d spend some time fixing the long-standing bugs and interface glitches in their Mac apps, but I’ve stopped bothering to submit bug reports.

Long time user of Prompt for occasional SSH needs from my couch or on the go into one of my machines. The previous version of Prompt has languished over time and now looks dated and the interface is glitchy. You can imagine my excitement to see an updated version come out! While the new mobile version is nice and polished, I can’t really see myself using the desktop companion when there’s regular ol SSH on macOS that I’ve been using for years. While it is nice, at this price point and with a subscription, I can’t get over the cost. You also have to consider Panic’s track record for keeping apps up to date once the shine wears off. Maybe at half the price I could get there but unless you’re a heavy SSH user or you’re sold on the desktop app and syncing I don’t see this being worth the price of admission.