Serial

My company stopped using Windows laptops several years ago but, they’d been keeping one old Toshiba for years because they needed it to console a SunOS box in case of an emergency. The HD died on that poor old Toshiba a few months ago and left us in a world of pain because we had to reboot the Sun server a few days later and couldn’t watch to see what was happening. That turned into about 30 minutes of three guys scared and twitching because we didn’t know if the machine was booting or not and it doesn’t have a VGA port to plugin a monitor. So, after that madness, I started looking for a way to get USB to serial access on our MacBooks rather than doing something like putting an old desktop next to that server. I googled here and there for a few days and kept finding forum posts from the guy that wrote Serial. I finally decided to download the trial version and test it out. I plugged in my USB to serial adapter and it just popped and worked without me having to find the drivers or anything for it. That’s amazing! Anyway, I’d recommend this to anyone that needs a Mac alternative to Putty or HyperTerminal.

I am a sound/video technician and decided I wanted to figure out a way to control the shutter option on my Eiki LC-X6 projector with the click of a GO button from another program called Qlab. I purchased a USB Serial adapter cable and installed the driver for it. I had unsuccessfully tried a freeware program before finding Serial. Luckily, I found Serial while doing some research. I gave it a try and it instantly recognized my adapter and notified me that the driver I had installed was going to be a problem. Serial advised me to remove the driver, which I did. After that, Serial worked like a charm. I was then able to write an AppleScript (my first!) to automate RS-232 commands to Serial for shutter control and execute them from Qlab. It was totally worth the $30 as it has made my life easier. I advise taking advantage of the 7 day free trial to see if it works for you. It took me less than a day to decide as it was working so well. I’m so grateful to Decisive Tactics for creating this program as it has inspired me to do more with programming. Thanks guys!

I love this app, works with all serial adapters I’ve tried, great UI, doesn’t leave sessions open that I forget to close, etc One bug I found was that it crashes loginwindow when used in conjuctiion with Remote Desktop and the built-in serial port on an Xserve. And then when I try to force quit Serial, it becomes a zombie process. I send HUP to loginwindow, and it doesn’t come back, so I have to power cycle the Xserve out-of-band. It’s considered vintage so no longer supported, but it runs Yosemite, and it is a bug, though it might not affect many people. So I have to use screen for using the serial port on the Xserve, but other than that, it is a great app, well worth its price. I’d love to be able to use it with the Xserve serial port though.

I'm working on a bunch of home automation gadgets building off of ESP32s and D1s Minis. There are great open source solutions, but they're all a little behind moving to USB-to-serial bridges that are compatible with the latest Mac security-related changes. I rationalized the cost for my use case, but YMMV. It's nice having an app from the App Store so that I know it will stay compatible with the latest Mac OS security changes. That's been my challenge with the open source stuff, and was happy to support this app in order to save me that time. It also got me back online for my ESP32 work on Big Sur, which made my weekend.

I love Serial. I paid for it years ago and have been thrilled with my investment for about 6 years now. It's definitely paid for itself in spades, and I've reccomended it to many people. So why 4 rather than 5 stars? This application deserves some developer attention and an update. Notably every time I open serial I get a message that says "This version of Serial has not been fully tested with macOS [version] and may not function properly. Please proceed with caution". I understand that Serial might be a little behind on this, but this has been going on for at least a year now, probably longer and no one seems inclined to fix it. Secondly. and this is more minor but something I care about -- Serial does not properly display unicode emojis such as 🙏🏼🐢 and 😊. It would be great to get this support in. Minicom does this for example and it's helpful. To close, I love this application, but for an application still charging $40 in the app store, I expect some developer attention. Our last update was a year and a half ago.

I routinely access networking gear using serial terminal connections. I struggled with several programs before coming across Serial a few years ago. I was hesitant to try it because it is expensive and there is no demo. Eventually, I took the risk and I ham glad that I did. Every USB to serial adapter I have tried has been natively supported by the program. It even worked flawlessly with my AirConsole WiFi/Bluetooth serial adapter. I couldn't recommend this program more. If you are hesitant like I was, take the chance. You'll be glad that you did.

I am a network engineer, and electronics hobbyist on the side. This does exactly what you need it to do, and not much more (which is a breath of fresh air.) It's just an app you can count on when you need to access a device via a serial connection. Drivers included for popular chipsets and Bluetooth. I never have to worry about whether my USB adapter is supported, I just plug it in, launch the app, do what I need to do, and get on with my life. It's absolutely perfect - don't change a thing.

This app was incredibly helpful in helping me sort out how a bizarre USB-port-that-is-actually-just-a-serial-port-and-not-a-USB-host-or-device pump controller transmitted data. The only feedback that I would have about it is that I should be able to configure the live view to show hex output. The only option is to attempt to decode the data to a character set, which is meaningless on some devices. The only way to see the hex data is to save a log to a file and open that up in a hex editor or something like Sublime after the capture is complete.

How have I missed this app?! I have been needing this for the last 11 years of using a Mac and being in the IT business. I have always just ran parallels with Windows/Putty to access my firewalls and switches. I ahve the new M1 Mac and I couldn't get the USB to Serial adapter to work with Windows 11 ARM, so I check one more time for a Mac App and holy cow my mind was blown. This app worked perfectly. It saw the USB to Serial adapter and just worked! It is worth every penny! I will not delete parallels and save that yearly money.

Serial has to be one of my best purchases of all time. A coworker found Serial when we were using our MacBook Pro's for our day-to-day network engineering tasks. I've been using it for over 7 years and have had nothing but good experiences with the product. Higly recommend just because of the simplicity.

This is hands down the best serial applicaton I have used for the MAC. I am constantly needing Serial access to various Cisco and HP switches/routers etc. This app has not failed me once. If I had any complaint it would be that the serial port for my Cisco 3560x over USB shows garabage for the name. But when selecting it it works perfect. I wish I could attach a screen shot here which would explain this better.

I use this application in my electronics hobby, for talking to the consoles of Raspberry Pis, Arduinos, and whatnot. This is hands-down the best application of it's kind that I've encountered. Not having the hassle (and potential security risk) of dealing with random 3rd-party driver KEXTs is the real killer feature of this app. The rest of it being easy to use, feature rich, and trouble-free is icing on the cake!

I've been using this app for several years to interface with serial ports of many different embedded devices. It has become an essential tool for firmware development and am very happy that it continues to be updated. It's one of the few apps I'm never looking out to replace.

For anyone curious -- there is a Serial 2 available on their website. This app has saved me SO much time, and it's an invaluable daily use tool for me. If you're doing serial work, this is a must-have. If you're doing terminal or SSH work, their new version has some very helpful new features.

The current state of USB serial drivers on the mac is just appaling. It used to be easy to enable unsigned USB serial drivers, but now it's incredibly difficult. This app makes all those problems disappear, and is a dream to use. Your money is well spent here if you place any value on your time. Well done. Please keep up the great work!

I'm a network engineer and am one of the few Mac users on my team. Serial has been a lifesaver. No messing with drivers or kexts. Just plug in your console cable, it's detected by Serial and you're off to the races. Don't even need to worry about baud/rate settings!

The more things change, the more you need to keep basic functionality to keep the new computers talking to legacy hardware systems. Serial has been reliable as some older legacy terminal options have not kept up with MacOS upgrades, etc.

Works with otherwise unusable USB-serial adapter U232-P9. However, whenever run under Ventura 13.0, gives a warning that the OS is unsupported. "This version of Serial has not been fully tested with macOS 13.0 and may not function properly. Please proceed with caution." Nevertheless, it seems to work fine.

If you work on networking gear you WILL LOVE THIS! It buffers what you are pasting, so that you can paste huge amounts of text, and it will paste one line at a time, and wait for the terminal to respond before entering in the next line! No more having to paste 5-10 lines at a time so that the switch/firewall/routers buffers don’t overload! Love it!!!

I frequently access Cisco equipment, and I used to use ZTerm all the time. But, since it no longer works on modern version of MacOS, I had to find something different. Glad I stumbled across this gem - it's much simpler to use than ZTerm, and I haven't had a single issue. Thanks!

If you're looking for a way to connect your Mac to a serial port, this app is the way to go. I'm a broadcast technician, and I use this app to diagnose problems with some of my gear. While I've not used all the functions of this app yet, my experience with it so far has made it well worth the $30. Thanks Decisive Tactics!

Works great unlike many other apps out there. My only knock is that it doesn't offer a trial or lite version. I was hesitant to buy at first but took a leap of faith and I wasn't disappointed. It's also nice that the developers seem to stay on top of product updates.

I hate to give this app anything less than 5 stars. Very simple and enjoyable to use. It has recently been crashing on me just about every time I use it though. The app goes into an unresponsive state and requre a computer restart to get it back into a fucntional state. I'm running Mac OS Mojave. I hope a future update fixes this!

I don’t remember when I bought this app but I’ve been very happy with the purchase. I can’t think of anything negitive to say. One of my favorite tools in my bag. Thank You for developing the app, it is very much appreciated.

This app is night and day better than using screen. My only complaint is that I haven't been able to paste more than one line of text into the terminal at any one time. If I try pasting more than one line I get a fault. Would love to see that fixed.

App seems to work ok. It comes up with a lot of "out of date" notices from OS-X. Apparently there is something that needs to be done. Not at all clear what that "something" is. Might be as simple as a re-compile with the current set of libraries.

I have been looking for a replacement for Z-Term for years. I did the free trial and I was amazed on how easy this was to use. Within 30 minutes I went ahead and purchased the product. Very well built and works well.

... on any platform. Better than Br@y's terminal or TeraTerm on Windows. Better than screen on the command line. What's great about it is that it has drivers for all sorts of USB-to-serial devices, even some for which no macOS driver exists.

I couldn't do my job without this tool and hope it will continue to be maintained. Payed upgrade to "Serial 2"? Sign me up!

Have been trying for a week to flash Firmware to my Creality CR10S V2 Pro 3D printer. Once I had USB C to USB Mini B cable without any adapters this App facilitated the process in a very straight forward manner.

Apple doesn’t seem to think we need serial port support. So if you have to use a serial console over USB, this is the best app to get.

Such a pleasure to use. An app like this is one of the few things missing from my iPad. Please consider making an iPad version.

I’ve used this app for last 3 years. It’s the best serial terminal emulator by far including those on Windows.

This version is incredibly out of date compared to what they offer on their website.

I have tried many Serial programs for a MAC and this is hands down the best! Worth every penny I spent plus some. Very happy :)

I use this program to send files over XMODEM to a 2004 Haas. Works great. No issues.

Works for jacking into odd network equipment to configure. Straightforwad and stable, pay the devs who wrote this.

They were wrong. This app worked almost OOTB with my TI Launchpad. Easily logged debug messages from Project Zero sample project.

BSD kernel = Nix Power Intel chipset = Running Safe Windows VM MacOSX = Best Creative User Experience Purchase Serial (no drivers) = Peripheral Management Heaven I need no other argument, this simply completes the most complete platform available. Ciao Tutti!

Granted, most system administroators out there these days probably didn't start out using serial connections every day, setting up VT terminals, or trying to get a serial console working on a Sun 2/120. But guess what? Serial ports and the need for a good termal program haven't gone away! Imagine that. For me, as a (you probably guessed it) systems admin this tool is indespensible. Sure, I could get all kinky and rig up a shell-based terminal program, or use one of the various tricks to get a serial connection to a router, switch, firewall, server, or other device. But why, when a program this elegant and functional is out there. It works, and it works well. It's handled every task, every connection, and every adaptor I've thrown at it, even some *really* old USB->Serial daptors I first used on my G4 Cube 20 years ago. It's clean, easy-to-use, and well-designed. I'm also visually-impaired, but I have zero issues using it. My hat is off to the developer, this is what all well-crafted software should be like. I usually don't wax so enthusiastic about software, but this package has gotten me out of so many jams that it's not funny. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit and we all had to go remote suddenly, I hooked a few serial adaptors onto the iMac on my desk and was able to keep an eye on our then aging firewall, core switch, and a few other things that I might've needed (or did need, as it turns out!) access to. So, if you're looking at the price tag and wondering, "Hey, I have to pay for this, is it worth it?" worry no more. It is.

Both the App Store version and the latest on their website (2.0.17) won't run on a Macbook Pro 14" 2023 (M3). It just crashed on startup.

This does not support modern macos. It has not been updated in a while.

I found the seven-day trial version while I was attempting to debug a USB-Serial Controller cable that didn’t seem to want to work properly with my Raspberry Pi serial console. I was very impressed with the experience and found the software far superior to other “serial tools” that I had previously purchased and attempted to use for this project without success. First, the Serial app warned me the USB drivers that were installed as a kernel extension were suspect. So, I found the instructions on how to disable them and allowed the Serial app to use its own built-in drivers. I considered this one less variable. Second, the Serial app seems to remember the speed, so when I requested 115,200 as the port speed, it would come up at that speed each time I exited and relaunched the app. It’s a minor thing, but one less mistake I can make during repeated testing. Third, as I grew more confident in the Serial app, I began to suspect my hardware. This led me to realize the USB-Serial Controller I was using had labeled the ports as TX and RX, but the adapter’s TX needed to go to the Raspberry Pi’s RX and so on. When I received the login prompt, I was quite thrilled. So, at this point I was just a few hours into a 7-day free trial. But I had a few things to accomplish on the system under test. At this point the interface impressed me. I was using “vi”, a full-screen editor, and it was very readable, very fast and really just got out of my way. I forgot I was actually using a USB-Serial adapter at some point and made tremendous progress. Really attractive serial terminal application. As a result of my trial use, I decided to go and purchase the software for “the next time”, and there is always a next time. At that point I realized this was the same provider that provided Printopia Pro, a package I’ve used for quite some time. Now I’ll be watching to see what else they might offer in the future. When I first saw the price my reaction was “no way”. After using the product, it seems like a very reasonable price. Life is too short for crappy software, and I highly recommend this product to get you out of that situation.

It works flawlesly with a console cable connected to a Cisco Router via USB to Serial adapter! Spent almost an hour trying to get CoolTerm on my MacBookPro (El Capitan) to work. And that’s not counting the USB to Serial driver installation. Eventually, I got CoolTerm to work except for the up/down arrows in order to repeat my previously typed commands. I had to jump through some many hoops in order to get CoolTerm to work with a console cable connection. With Serial, it only took me a minute. Granted, I had the USB to Serial adapter driver already installed before purchasing and installing this app. I can’t really tell how long it would take without the driver being installed first but compared to the other app it was a walk on the park. To me, it just worked right out of the App Store.

Paid 39 dollars to find that it does not work with my Keyspan 28 usb adapter. What a waste of money

I am quite disappointed that there is no ability to log a serial session. The only option is to export the text of the session, after it is complete. I have never used a serial emulation app that didn’t have this function (on Mac or Windows), so I didn’t even think to verify this feature was available before purchasing. Logging a session is very important for network equipment admins for a few reasons. First, you may be logging serial output for an extended period of time, and you want to make sure you have as much data as possible (and don’t want to have unlimited scrollback), especially when unexpected events occur. Second, you can monitor the file output to trigger scripts or other processes to help in troubleshooting. Third, you might not want to have the whole session as output. You can do multiple copy-and-pastes, but temporarily logging a portion of the session is a standard way of going about this. Not to mention it is darn convenient and gives you that warm and fuzzy that information is already stashed to a file. To be fair, the rest of the app’s features seem solid. I wish I would have used the free trial, which I encourage everyone else to do. I didn’t see that was available from their web site until after purchasing through the app store. If the app had been $5, I could see letting it go. But I had to shell out $30. Unfortunately, I am going back to ZTerm.

I’m a Cisco networking administrator. This tool works great with my new MacBook (the one with only 1 USB-C port). I have the Apple brand USB-C to USB adapter. This terminal emulator works immediately with a generic Prolific USB to Serial adapter, which NO LONGER WORK IN EL CAPITAN. Let me stress that, anyone reading this review. The only way to get a USB to Serial adapter to work, other than this excellent utility, is to modify your operating system and remove safeguards to prevent unsigned applications from running. I do not recommend doing that. This terminal emulator works great. No playing around with “screen” or whatever it was I was using before. Plug in your console cable, hit enter twice and you are at the command line. And all the putty functionality that you are familiar with works. No drivers needed for the USB to Serial adapter. Great job, DTI.

I've used this for awhile now, and its been rock solid the whole time. All the cheaper apps I've tried were useless. I'm using it to comminucate with my Arduino, and its great. I've migrated to a bluetooth serial connection, and that worked right off the bat as well, something none of the other apps would do. For some reason DTR doesn't seem to work over bluetooth, but that's a minor issue ( lots of times with the arduino you don't want it to work ). Also when the app isn't in the foreground, the cursor shows ( even though I turn it off), thats being really picky but it is a little annoying since I'm usually displaying data with lots of cursor movements. However that's something I can't even do with other apps since they don't emulate VT100 terminal commands, so overall I'm happy with this app.

I stumbled across this app from post on forums. There is a free trial available of this software on there website. If you are worried about cost, download the trial first and make sure your serial adapter is supported. I am using a cheap Prolific PL2303, my expensive keyspan usb to serial did not work with this software (no fault of the developer). It appears that device is no longer supported on any OSX past Lion. I have had no issues with this software it has a very easy to use interface. I have tested it with supermicro motherboards, dell switches and cisco routers. Has the option to press the “Break” key under the “Terminal” Tab (essential when working with cisco devices).

Coolterm, SerialTools, goSerial, and the list can go on and on with what doesnt work… all you need to know is Serial works! I struggled for days trying to find something that worked perfectly for me to connect to Sun, Fujitsu, Cisco, and HP-UX boxes with zero issues.. and I can tell you that Serial does the trick. Everything else has some sort of issue with emulation, having to reboot, doesnt handle pulling your cable and reconnecting, ect… Serial is great and worth every penny, I was extremely hesitant to spend $30 on this.. but it’s well worth it seeing I have spent days hunting, searching and banging my head against walls looking for something that works!