Dbeaver is my stand alone app of choice. It’s Java based but has some nice features as well.
Your right though, the interface really wasn't too terrible. Was definitely better than what was available for Postgres even a few years later when I first had contact with that.
But then, I suppose PHP itself is good enough and the people using it never felt a need for anything new. Laravel solved the lack of application structure / design handrails, and Facebook solved or worked on the bigger issues around the language - typing and runtime performance.
Despite that, php has its limits, and it's important to know them, and the workarounds for most of them. What is also tricky is a total lack of support from Azure for example.