Prompt 3 Reviews

They didn’t care to fix the freeze on startup bug for Prompt 2 last year. The bug was not fixed as of 2024. Prompt 2 was removed from Prompt3 Store, which means they will not fix the issue!
Will not be purchasing or subscribing to Prompt 3. They are not trust worthy, I’m sure any major bugs in Prompt 3 will not get fix when Prompt 4 is out. SMH

I use iTerm as my daily driver; I will admit to loving Panic Sync for keeping my SSH configurations and credentials in sync across multiple computers, which is a hassle otherwise. The same functionality in a similar product is $10/month, so a great savings.

My usage for SSH/terminals, though, does not usually follow a work flow where I wait to open a whole separate app and make a connection. A global hotkey to show/hide the window (as well as the ability to hide from Dock/task switcher), and some better keyboard navigation once Prompt3 is up would convince me to switch full-time.

Black screen after hiding extra keys. Much more expensive than before. Get the version number out of Prompt3 name please. Extra keys are huge. No F keys and I can’t figure out how to add so can’t use mc for example. Overall not better and not better looking than v2 but good to have it around still. Nothing beats a Mac and Terminal of course, these mobile apps are for emergencies only.

The beautiful music I was listening to was disturbed by some background music, which it turned out was coming from Prompt, and there was no way of turning it off during the setup process.
If this had happened in a situation where I used my Mac in an AV production environment for example, the consequences could have been lost work.
Not a good onboarding experience!

Longtime iTerm user. Off the bat, I couldn't SSH to any of the sites that I normally SSH to thru the terminal. These are all sites that are authenticated via an SSH key, which I did add to the site config. Maybe it's because I'm on a VPN? Don't know, but I was able to get to them by using a local terminal session and then using the SSH command like I normally would in iTerm. The included themes are kind of thin and not that great. I'm sure that will change over time as well. Out of the gate, it's good, but if I wasn't a die hard Panic Nova/Transmit user, I'd probably pass on this until it matures a bit more. However, on the iPad, it's the best option available and well worth the money. So if you look at it like you are getting the Mac version for free for buying the iPad version, then it's probably worth it.

It's a decent overall first attempt at a macOS terminal. However, they have entered a very croweded pool, and it needs more flexibility. Font rendering is poor compared to iTerm2., being either to fat when smoothing is enabled, or too jagged if it is turned off. Nerd Fonts have vertical height issues.

There's no ssh-agent integration. For example, many of us keep our SSH keys in 1Password, and unlock them with TouchID. There is no way to use these keys in a Prompt server config, other than opening a local terminal and using ssh directly the old fashion way.

I wanted to love Prompt3 because I love Panic and have and depend on their other apps. However, I can’t have a terminal that crashes. Just can’t. I will revisit when Prompt is more mature, but for now I will stay with my rock solid iTerm2.

I'm still not ready to give up Sublime Text and make the switch to Nova, so I definitely appreciate you bringing us a standlone Prompt.

For anyone reading this, make sure you enable the GPU acceleration option to noticably speed up scrolling.

I only used it for about five minutes and then canceled my subscription.

Pros:

Secure Enclave can be used for an SSH key.

Cons:

Changing font sizes will have your terminal go black
Unhelpful error messages ( “Failed” instead of “TCP connection refused” for instance )
Crashed on me several times in the few minutes I used it.
No landscape mode at least on my iPhone, why!?

I use Berkeley Mono patched with Nerd Font support. Unlike every other terminal app I've tried Prompt becomes blank when I try to use the font.

Quick question: Why do we need Prompt3 on Mac? The default terminal works much better than this.

Excellent, been using Prompt for a number of years and this is a good update. I like the sync ability to keep my iPad and iPhone in sync. Also like the passwordless ssh ability. A bit expensive, but worth the cost

Prompt 3 is a great terminal emulator, and it’s earned a spot on my iPad dock. I’ve been using terminal programs for decades, starting with X windows, and this is the best one I’ve used on iOS. Support for Eternal Terminal and mosh is great (and not common in other emulators), as is syncing profiles via iCloud. I don’t plan to use my iPhone as a terminal a lot, but being able to do small things with it without setting everything up again is nice.

It supports themes and lets you customize colors and fonts, definitely useful on iPad. Also handles SSH keys well. Logging of ssh sessions and terminal logs (both optional) let me debug connections if needed and remember what I did - essential for sysadmin. Being able to run on Mac (for no added cost!) is also nice, since it means one set of profiles across all my systems. Not sure how it compares to iTerm, but I’ll find out.

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.

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, Prompt3 crashes. I’m just glad I still have Prompt 2. I’ll try Prompt3 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.

EDIT: Panic Support was super helpful and told me how to map the Home and End keys

Lot's of potential in this application, please keep it up. The only criticism I have is the billing model. I have a work Apple ID and a personal Apple ID and they do not mix, so if I want to use Prompt I have to buy it twice, I guess that's ok for the devs, but I'd really like the ability to purchase it outside of Apple billing (maybe the $99 one time purchase is the solution, I am hesitant to try it...)

Wonderful idea, great company. They responded to my intemperate grumbling with prompt aplomb.

The reviews that the Mac version needs some work are not wrong, but seeing how imrpoved Nova has gotten over the years I anticipate the same here and I can see mysef converting from iTerm2 to Prompt full time in the near future.

This offers very little in comparison to iTerm, and at a non-inconsequential cost. I suppose if you just need it for mobile use, but then it still seems expensive for what it is.

If, like me you purchased based on the advertised local terminal support in macOS -- don't. It's a lie.

After purchasing, there is still no option for a local shell. The UI didn't change, there's no new button for a local shell. Just remotes.

For some reason, Prompt3 doesn't even come with tooling needed to use it locally. You need to install some fishy "extension" for local support. Which you don't need to do with iTerm or Warp. Not that it matters, even with that extension installed, there's still no option to just open a local shell.

Really sad to see Panic enter their scam phase.

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 Prompt3 , 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 Prompt3 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..

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.