Comparison

Lochan vs Drover

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side โ€” with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Lochan

Features
Read full description

Your coding agents keep working when you step away. Lochan is how you keep up with them, calmly. When Claude Code, Codex or any other agent on your computer stops to ask a question, open its real terminal on your phone, read what it did, and answer. Then get back to your walk. A CALM VIEW OF A BUSY HERD Every agent on the machine at a glance, with a line on where each one left off. The ones waiting on you always come first. - Tiles: the whole herd as a grid that moves as your agents do - Board: Blocked, Working, Done and Idle as columns you swipe through - Projects: agents grouped by the project they are working in ASK THE SHEPHERD One question, the whole herd. The Shepherd is an agent on your computer that reads every other pane. Ask it what needs you, what changed or whether anything is stuck, and it answers from what is on the screens, with a link to each pane it mentions. It runs Claude Code by default, or Codex, Pi, OpenCode or Grok. ANY AGENT CAN JOIN THE HERD Lochan does not plug into your agent. It opens the terminal the agent is already running in, so it works with Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Grok, OpenCode, Aider and anything else with a prompt. A new agent works the day it ships. A REAL TERMINAL, IN YOUR POCKET Tap any agent for the actual session: full output, scrollback and a keyboard. MAKE THE KEYS YOUR OWN Two rows of keys sit above the terminal. Drag any key to either row, switch off the ones you never use, and add your own: - Text keys for the commands you repeat, like /compact, /usage or /model sonnet - Chord keys for Ctrl, Option and Shift combos, like your tmux prefix or Ctrl-R SHARE A SCREENSHOT WITH YOUR AGENT Pick a photo, take one of the screen in front of you, or send a file. It lands on your computer and its path goes into the prompt, ready for you to finish and send. SAY IT. CHECK IT. SEND IT. Dictate a long instruction, read the transcript, and send it only when it reads right. Or write it in a real text box, with a draft that waits if you get pulled away. RUN THE HERD FROM YOUR PHONE Start a new agent in any project, rename it, and close it when it is done. BUILT FOR A PHONE Lochan tells each agent it is being driven from a phone, so it leads with the answer, keeps replies short and batches its questions. PAIRED IN ONE SCAN Run one line on your Mac or Linux machine, then scan the code it shows. Your phone makes its own key, and it stays in the phone's Keychain. Nothing to type, no private key to copy. Save every machine you own and switch between them from the title bar. No account, and no Lochan server in between: your phone talks to your computers over SSH. Away from home you need a route to them, and Tailscale is the two-minute version. ALSO IN LOCHAN: A PRIVATE AI CHAT Chat with Apple's on-device model, open models downloaded to your phone, or cloud models with your own API key. Conversations branch instead of overwriting, and you can share one with a link we cannot read. Lochan works with Herdr, the terminal workspace for AI coding agents, on the computers you own.

About

Drover

Supervise AI coding agents running on your computer directly from your phone. View sessions as a chat, interact with prompts via buttons, and receive notifications when agents need your input. Connects directly via SSH with no intermediary servers.

Highlights
  • Supervise AI coding agents
  • View sessions as chat
  • Interact with prompts via buttons
  • Receive agent status notifications
  • Direct SSH connection
  • Voice dictation
  • Attach photos to agents
Features
Read full description

Drover is a mobile client for the AI coding agents you run under Herdr on your own computer. It turns them into something you can supervise from your phone. It is not a mobile terminal. Drover speaks the agent's language: it renders a running session as a readable chat, turns permission prompts into buttons you can tap, and tells you the moment an agent is waiting on you. NO SERVER IN BETWEEN Drover connects straight from your device to your own machine over SSH. There is no service in the middle. Your transcripts, your commands and your code go to your machine and nowhere else โ€” the developer of this app cannot see them. WHAT YOU CAN DO โ€ข See every agent and its status at a glance โ€” waiting for you, working, done โ€ข Read the session as a chat, with Markdown, syntax-highlighted code and diffs โ€ข Answer an agent's permission prompt by tapping a button instead of typing into a raw terminal pane โ€ข Send follow-up instructions, cycle the agent's mode, or dictate by voice โ€ข Attach a photo from your camera or library for the agent to look at โ€ข Get a notification the moment an agent is blocked and needs you โ€ข Switch between several machines, or watch them all in one list TRY IT WITH NO SETUP Tap "Try the demo" on the first screen. It runs a scripted session entirely on your device, with no host and no connection, so you can see how Drover works before setting anything up. WHAT YOU NEED Drover is a client for a machine you already own. To use it for real you need a computer running Herdr (herdr.dev) with your coding agents in it, SSH access to that machine with key-based authentication, and Herdr 0.8.0 or newer. PRIVACY Speech recognition runs entirely on your device โ€” Drover will not fall back to a server. Notifications carry a fixed message and never any of your transcript. Your SSH key is stored in the iOS Keychain and never leaves your device. Drover is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the Herdr project, Anthropic, OpenAI, or GitHub, and is not certified by any of them.

Screenshots

Lochan4 screens
Drover4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Drover at every 5 days against Lochan's fortnightly. Drover also leads on iOS requirement (15.0 vs 26.0). On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS

CostPrice ยท In-app purchases ยท Ads ยท Monetization

Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Lochan ships an update fortnightly, Drover every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on November 1, 2026 and October 31, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences ยท 6 level
Lochan versus Drover: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterLochanDrover
PriceFreeFree
Positive reviewsโ€”100.0% of reviews
Update frequencyFortnightlyEvery 5 days โ€” better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
Monetizationโ€”Free
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, iPod
Requires iOS26.015.0 โ€” better
Further details โ€” not scored
Size63 MB37 MB
Age rating17+4+
DeveloperPurplecones, LLCKEISUKE NISHITANI

In-app purchases

None

Lochan

No in-app purchases

None

Drover

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Lochan free?
Lochan is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Drover free?
Drover is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Lochan or Drover have ads?
Neither Lochan nor Drover shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Lochan or Drover?
Lochan ships an update fortnightly, and Drover every 5 days. Most recently, Lochan was updated on November 1, 2026 and Drover on October 31, 2026.

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