Prompt 3 is Panic's iOS SSH client. Panic ship beautifully made software like Transmit and Nova, and Prompt is the SSH entry in that catalogue. It is a paid app, either a small yearly subscription or a one-time purchase, and the polish shows. ShellDrop sits on a different axis: free, narrower, and tuned for tmux and AI coding agents running on a headless Mac Mini or VPS.
Both apps are good at what they do. The question is which fits your workflow. Honest side-by-side below.
| ShellDrop 5 | Prompt 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Paste a screenshot into the terminal | Yes. Any image, multi-image; agent reads them on the server | No. Not a documented feature |
| Attach a file from Files or Photos | Yes. Files, photos or video; uploads over SSH, path lands at the prompt | No. Not a documented feature |
| Agent-to-phone clipboard | Yes. The agent can drop text onto your phone's clipboard | No |
| Voice dictation | Built in. On-device Apple speech free, or your own Groq key. | Not a listed feature |
| Pricing | Free. No account, no in-app purchases | $9.99 a year, or $49.99 one-time (7-day free trial) |
| Platforms | Native on iPhone and iPad, Vision Pro with version 5, macOS coming soon | iPhone, iPad, Mac, Vision Pro (one purchase unlocks all) |
| Account required | No | No (optional free Panic Sync) |
| Telemetry | None | Usage and crash data, not linked to your identity |
| Password auth | Yes | Yes |
| Public-key auth (SSH keys) | Yes. Ed25519, Secure Enclave P-256, OpenSSH import | Yes. Secure Enclave, YubiKey, SSH certificates |
| Secure Enclave hardware keys | Yes | Yes |
| SFTP file browser | None | None (Panic ships Transmit separately) |
| Mosh support | No (opt-in keep-alive and auto-reconnect) | Yes, plus Eternal Terminal |
| GPU-accelerated rendering | No | Yes |
| Tmux single-finger scroll | Yes | Standard scroll |
| iPad layout (incl. 13" iPad Pro M4) | Universal app, full-canvas landscape, centred toolbar | Universal app, iPad supported |
| Connection sync | Your own iCloud CloudKit (no vendor account) | Optional Panic Sync (servers, keys, passwords) |
| Custom command shortcut | One Tap toolbar button | Clip manager (paste snippets) |
| Background session keep-alive | Opt-in, location-services-based | Limited (iOS standard) |
| Theme + font customisation | Standard | Extensive, Panic-polish |
Copy an image anywhere on the phone and paste it into the session. Your agent reads it on the server. Multi-image paste works too. The same toolbar has a paperclip button for files: pick one from Files, or a photo or video from the library, upload over SSH, and the path lands at the prompt. Prompt does not do either: pasting a screenshot or attaching a file into the session is not one of its features. For anyone feeding screenshots to a coding agent all day, that is the gap between one paste and a five-step detour.
The clipboard works the other way too. Ask the agent to write something, tell it to copy the result, and it lands on the phone's clipboard ready to paste into another app. It is opt-in and takes about ten seconds to set up. Terminal text selection is now a dedicated mode: toggle it on, long-press a word, drag the handles, copy. And Nerd Fonts (FiraCode and JetBrains Mono) ship bundled, so the glyphs nvim and LazyVim rely on render the way they should.
ShellDrop costs nothing. Prompt 3 is a paid app, either a small yearly subscription or a one-time purchase, and Panic is a reputable studio you'd be happy to support. Free just removes the up-front decision.
Single-finger swipe through tmux scrollback without entering copy mode. The toolbar carries Esc, Ctrl-C, arrow keys, Shift-Tab, and a tmux detach button at all times. If most of your remote work happens inside a tmux pane attached to Claude Code or Codex, that is the differentiator.
ShellDrop generates P-256 keys inside the iPhone Secure Enclave. The private key is created on-device and cannot be exported. Ed25519 generation and paste-import of unencrypted OpenSSH keys (Ed25519, ECDSA P-256/P-384/P-521) are also supported. Prompt 3 also does Secure Enclave keys, and goes further with YubiKey hardware keys and SSH certificates, so on key management the two are close, with Prompt covering more hardware options.
Universal app, full landscape, hardware-keyboard friendly. On the 13" iPad Pro M4 the terminal uses the whole canvas, the toolbar centres, font scaling is comfortable. Prompt 3 also handles iPad well; ShellDrop's layout is built around the large-canvas case specifically.
ShellDrop adds Voice Drop, a built-in mic on the keyboard toolbar. It transcribes on-device with Apple speech at no cost, or through your own Groq API key for whisper-large-v3-turbo, and drops the words at the cursor without sending Return. Dictating a long prompt to an agent is the kind of input a phone keyboard is worst at, and it is where ShellDrop puts the least friction.
Version 5 also added custom key bindings for the keyboard toolbar: create your own Tmux-aware keys in Settings, Ctrl plus a key with an optional follow-up, and arrange them like any stock key.
Prompt 3 renders the terminal on the GPU, and Panic quote scrolling up to around ten times faster than the previous version. On a busy log or a fast build it feels immediate. ShellDrop's terminal is quick but not GPU-accelerated.
Prompt 3 speaks Mosh and Eternal Terminal alongside SSH, so a flaky connection survives roaming and sleep without a hard reconnect, and on the Mac it opens a local shell. ShellDrop is SSH-only, with an opt-in keep-alive and auto-reconnect instead.
One purchase unlocks Prompt on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Vision Pro, and optional Panic Sync keeps servers, keys, and passwords in step across them through Panic's own free service. ShellDrop is native on iPhone and iPad, the Vision Pro app arrives with version 5, and a macOS app is coming soon. It syncs connections through your own iCloud.
Prompt 3 ships a mature theme system, font picker, jump hosts, port forwarding, agent forwarding, and the typographic care Panic is known for. If you live inside the app for hours and want deep cosmetic and UX configurability, Prompt covers more ground than ShellDrop's opinionated layout.
No, pasting a screenshot into the session is not one of Prompt 3's features. ShellDrop lets you copy any image on the phone, paste it into the session for your agent to read.
No. Prompt 3 is a paid app from Panic with a 7-day free trial, then $9.99 a year or $49.99 as a one-time purchase. ShellDrop is free with no in-app purchases.
Yes. ShellDrop is free with no in-app purchases. The two apps target different users, Prompt is polished general-purpose; ShellDrop is built for tmux and AI coding agent workflows.
Yes. Ed25519, ECDSA P-256/P-384/P-521 paste-import of unencrypted OpenSSH keys, plus Secure Enclave-backed P-256 keys where the private key is hardware-bound.
It runs tmux over SSH like any terminal. No dedicated tmux mode. ShellDrop adds single-finger tmux scrollback and an always-visible detach button.
Either covers the SSH layer. ShellDrop is built around this workflow: tmux scroll, dedicated Esc / Ctrl-C / arrow keys, background keep-alive, One Tap for firing commands at the agent.
ShellDrop is on the App Store. Universal iPhone and iPad, iOS 17+. Free, no subscription.
