Prompt 2

As of version 2.6.12 (released on 10/22/2019), Prompt 2 contains a new “Connection Keeper” feature which allows you to audit where and when you’ve connected to your servers. As a bonus, it also helps keep your connections alive while Prompt is in the background, allowing more background time on iOS 13. This can be enabled in Prompt’s in-app Settings > Connection Keeper.

The Connection Keeper feature does require iOS Location permissions. Once enabled, Connection Keeper makes use of iOS location tech to show you a list of all locations where you’ve connected to servers. As Prompt can’t make use of other iOS backgrounding options (like turn-by-turn navigation or media playback) this was our best option to allow users extended background time on iOS. Without this, Prompt is limited to iOS’ general background time limit, explained below.

Note: Your location data is only used on-device for the Connection Keeper feature and is never sent anywhere for any reason.

How long can I stay connected when the app is running in the background?

We’ve designed our apps to maintain server connections for as long as possible. Typically, iOS policies permit up to 10 minutes of background time after the app is suspended or the device is locked. In practice this time can vary wildly, but we request as much time as the system will allow. The unfortunate reality is that you most likely won’t ever get the full 10 minutes: iOS will decide when it needs extra resources and can suspend our apps in the background at any time.

When a background transfer or terminal session is in progress you should see a notification to re-open the app before the connection is terminated. If this isn’t being displayed, please check to make sure that notifications for the app are enabled in the Settings.app.

From what we can tell, our available background time in iOS 13 has been drastically reduced from earlier versions of iOS. It appears that if you’re running one of our iOS apps on iOS 13, you’ll only get about 30 seconds of background time before needing to switch back to the app to prevent your connection from being terminated.

What about Mosh?

Mosh is a great technology, but there are complications which prevent us from supporting it in Prompt. More details over here.