Universal Control is Apple’s most impressive new feature in years – But yes Apple only, and not for MacBook Airs prior to 2018

If you haven’t heard of Universal Control, it basically lets you use your Mac’s keyboard and mouse or trackpad to control your iPad (and the opposite scenario also works). Just nudge your cursor to the side of your Mac’s monitor, and it’ll jump on over to the iPad like it was another monitor hooked up to your Mac. But it’s not a Mac monitor — it’s still an iPad. Just one that you can control with the keyboard and trackpad you were using seconds ago with your Mac.

You’ve been able to use iPads as wired or wireless external Mac monitors for many years through official or third-party means. With Universal Control, though, you’re still using iPad OS on the iPad’s screen — you just don’t have to take your hands off your Mac’s input devices to get there. It’s multitasking between multiple OSes and devices instead of just multiple apps.

So this can work really well and seamlessly between a MacOS device and an iPad, but it does not work for 2016/2018 and older Mac devices, and it also does not work with say Linux, Windows and other computers. So it is ideal if you have that specific use case, for others maybe something like Synergy (or it’s open source fork called Barrier) works far better where you want to share that same mouse and keyboard between macOS, Windows, Linux, and Raspberry Pi computers.

Universal Control’s niche is really about the connecting with an iPad, but that said, it is implemented very well.

See https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/16/22980566/universal-control-ios-macos-mac-ipad-hands-on

#technology #apple #universalcontrol #ipad