Needs Improvement

This app is nice for organizing your sessions. You can create folders and organize everything in a nice tree hierarchy / list. I also like the instant theme change option. It helps you keep track of where you are when you have a bunch of active connections.

However, for $15, it should do more than look nice. Saving sessions and organizing them is something anyone can do in Terminal with very minimal bash skills.

I’ve been trying to like this app for months. I’ve been hoping for updates, but nada.. I think it’s a great start; but months later, the developers are still standing at the start line! They seriously need to start building on this thing further.

Here’s what I don’t like about this app:

- Keyboard shortcuts are limited. You need your mouse.. A LOT. You can’t hit the adress bar with a shorcut, you can’t navigate through your saved sessions with the keyboard & even if you "mouse" your way to session management, you cant launch the highlighted session with your keyboard. If you use this a lot, you’re most likely in IT. If you’re in IT, you hate your trackpad/mouse/whatever. Developers won’t like this app.

- The existing, and very limited (again), keyboard shortcuts cannot be edited. You’re stuck with what the developers thinks is best for you.

- The address bar feature is a nice "quick connect" option.… only it’s NOT! It’s only there for manually typing your connection "ssh://me@over-there…". It doesn’t remember addresses. It doesn’t suggest saved sessions while you type.. seriously? It’s just for looks. Type your terminal command in an omni bar which does nothing but provide false expectations... and of course no keyboard shortcut to higlight it.

- This app is RARELY updated. I think I’ve only seen an update once(?). I’ve had this app for months. I think I was one of the first few who bought it. I was excited because I figured for $15, it could actually make shell life easier. It did not. The annoying factors seriously outweigh the benefits here..

All in all, it looks nice, but if you write code you won’t like it. If you write code = you connect to a lot of remotes & you do it frequently. In my opinion, that’s easier to do in Terminal with a few personalized bash scripts here n there. I’m disappointed by how little the developers have done to improve this application. This app mainly targets programmers. Know your audience. You’re not even trying.

Mazen Merhi about ShellCraft - SSH Client