October 13 2017

EC2 SSH on the iPhone with Panic Prompt

by Brian Dunagan

In 2011, I wrote about EC2 SSH on the iPad with Panic Prompt. Six years later, it’s still the only app I use but now on my iPhone. Recently, I was on a tour bus careening around the streets of Porto, Portugal, while kicking off scripts on an EC2 micro VM (which are amazingly priced at ~$5/mo). Prompt just works.

In the last post, my recommended steps involved syncing your iOS device with iTunes and dragging the keypair into “File Sharing” to get it onto your iOS device. Clearly, that doesn’t cut it anymore. Apple has migrated away from iTunes completely. Luckily, you can easily use Apple’s Notes application:

1. On your Mac, open Notes.
2. On your Mac, open the keypair file in a text editor.
3. Copy the contents into Notes.
4. On your device, open Notes.
5. After the file syncs, copy the keypair out of Notes.
6. Launch Prompt, click on the gears icon for Settings, then tap “Keys” and “+” and “Paste from Clipboard”.
7. Connect to EC2.