Panic

Panic Blog

January 24th, 2024

Yes, it’s time for an announcement!

The best SSH app for iOS now includes a Mac companion. Prompt 3 is here and ready to work.

Way back at the beginning of 2011, we introduced Prompt: a nice, clean SSH terminal client for the iPad and iPhone. People loved it. Then, four years later came Prompt 2, which became the premier terminal client for iOS and iPadOS. Prompt 2 was a stable, reliable workhorse for lots of people – an easy, fast, and nice looking way to connect to servers and do server things on them. Its 4.8-star rating across over 4,300 reviews was a shining testament to that.

Now after many years of work, we’re excited to finally announce Prompt’s next major update. It’s here!

Learn More about Prompt 3

We know it’s been a long (long) time coming, so we made sure to add all of your most-requested Prompt features, like support for Mosh and Eternal Terminal, jump hosts, port forwarding, proper iPadOS multitasking, YubiKey and Secure Enclave authentication, and so much more.

With lightning-fast terminal emulation (thanks to optional GPU acceleration) and customizable fonts and themes, Prompt 3 is speedier and more personal than ever. And yep, there’s even a dark icon.

Oh, and one more thing: Prompt 3 now includes a Mac version, for no additional cost.

And thanks to Panic Sync, your servers and clips are automatically at your fingertips on all the devices and platforms where you run Prompt.

It was important to us that Prompt 3 feel right on all your devices. Since Mac apps have always been a passion of ours here at Panic, these are two separate apps, each developed from the ground up to feel right at home on each platform. The Mac app is a Mac app. The iOS app is an iOS app.

Getting started is so easy. When you pay for one platform, the other version is automatically unlocked and ready for you to download from the App Store.

How much? Not much! Just $19.99 per year, cancel anytime. We’ve been very open about the challenges of making money on iOS utility software, and after evaluating the options available to us on the App Store, we feel this is the best way to support ongoing development of Prompt.

And an app like Prompt really needs full-time development! In addition to the new features and UI refinements required for every major OS update, we spend a lot of time updating and testing our products each year, and there are plenty of new features we want to bring to Prompt 3 in the future.

And remember: you get two separate apps for your subscription — both the Mac and iOS versions of Prompt 3. There’s even a free 7-day trial.

But if you really don’t like subscriptions, believe me, we totally understand. So, we’re also providing an option to buy Prompt 3 outright with a one-time purchase. It’s more expensive, yes, but it will be yours forever.

We believe Prompt 3 is an incredible, professional, and reliable terminal emulator for a fraction of the price of the others. With its lovely user interface, it’s easy and, dare we say, almost pleasant to do command line work on your various servers. We’re sure you’ll understand as soon as you try it yourself.

Prompt 3 is now available on the App Store with a free 7-day trial.

Prompt 3 was built by Michael Buckley, with help from Logan Collins and Heather Buletti, product management by Aaron Bell, design by Kenichi Yoshida and Neven Mrgan, and is currently supported by Jesus Diaz and Mike Freuden.

We hope you enjoy it!

PS: We’re on standby to fix bugs and make it even better! Send us your notes!

Posted at 2:32 pm 9 Comments

Mick Sanders

2/21/2024 8:11 PM

Regarding pricing for Prompt3: I love your apps (especially Transmit, which is the best thing out there), but AUD $150 for a lifetime license?? I appreciate your openness on dev costs and subscriptions, but charging 5 years of subs for a one-off license is way too much for me. Anyhow, best wishes, M.

Jacob Ford

2/21/2024 8:49 PM

Surprise excitement! What’s the situation with Prompt 2’s future, with separate apps being sandboxed and separately priced and all?

Joseph Lyons

2/22/2024 1:06 AM

Are there any upgrade paths for existing owners of prompt?

“It’s more expensive, yes, but it will be yours forever.” When you mention “forever,” are you referring specifically to the perpetual license for Prompt 3, rather than an indefinite license for all versions of Prompt, correct? For instance, when Prompt 4 is released, would it be included in the “forever” license?

What if we purchased Prompt for iOS prior? Are we back at step 1 now and have to buy it again?

Steve Nicholson

2/22/2024 10:42 AM

Cabel, sometimes I think you come out with new releases just as an excuse to make another awesome promotional video. 😁

@keith Prompt 2 was released in 2014 — we updated it onsistently it for 10 years without charging another dime. So at this time, there’s no upgrade discount going from Prompt 2 > Prompt 3.

But, we’re always gathering feedback so I’ll make a note of your request! (The good news is that Prompt 2 should continue to work just fine.)

Chris Radford

2/25/2024 7:40 AM

Super excited to see Panic continue to release truly wonderful iOS and Mac apps, you’re apps have lived on my various devices for about 15 years at this point, and I still get excited to see new releases. Thank you!

Is the forever license for Prompt 3 only a license for 3, or will it be a perpetual license, for example, Prompt 4?