If your Mac is jogging macOS Catalina, you can now use your iPad as a secondary monitor with the brand new “Sidecar” characteristic. It’s ridiculously easy to installation wirelessly through AirPlay.
First, a few notes. Unlike with a few existing 0.33-birthday party display-sharing apps such as Air Display three, you can, without a doubt, best use your palms on the show for easy actions such as scrolling via text.
The Apple Pencil works as a “mouse,” although it consists of its users to modify and create photographs thru the total version of Adobe Photoshop whilst we’re waiting for the proper iPad model to appear. Apart from the Apple Pencil, the interaction involves some of the shortcuts at the interface’s borders—and you could press those together with your arms. Notably, Apple also consists of relevant Touch Bar movements when someone uses an app on the iPad through Sidecar, so in Safari, for instance, you’ll see the visible toggle for the exclusive tabs.
Learn greater approximately macOS Catalina
We’ll map all that out in a bit. First, here’s a way to set it up.
How to set up Sidecar through AirPlay
Make positive your Mac is going for walks macOS Catalina and that your iPad is running iPadOS. You do now not need to free up the iPad for Sidecar to work.
Select the AirPlay icon to your Mac’s Menu Bar. It looks like a rectangle with a strong triangle pointing upward at the lowest.
Find the iPad you want to use as a secondary screen and select it. In the example here, it’s “Leif’s iPad.”
Your iPad has to, without delay, start working as a secondary show. You’ll see an empty laptop pop up on your iPad, and the AirPlay icon for your Mac’s main menu bar will change into a mild blue rectangle.
You can also ship an app to Sidecar at any time (although it’s now not become on but) through retaining your mouse over the inexperienced expansion button, which you locate on the pinnacle bar of a Mac app. A menu will pop up, and urgent Move to [iPad] will, without delay, ship it over to the iPad and set off Sidecar.
To forestall using your iPad as a secondary show, press the blue rectangle again. You’ll see a menu pop up. Press Disconnect, and the iPad will go again to being a regular iPad.
You also can replicate your Mac’s show in preference to the usage of the iPad as a secondary reveal through pressing the AirPlay icon—the blue rectangle—and choosing “Mirror Display.”
How to customize your iPad’s Sidecar interface
By default, your iPad running Sidecar has a two-bar interface border around the display region that you can interact with your fingers’ usage. If you find those bars distracting, you can flip off both of them with the aid of clicking AirPlay’s blue rectangle inside Mac’s menu bar and clicking Open Sidecar Preferences at the bottom. (You also can get entry to this by way of going to your Mac’s System Preferences and choosing Sidecar.) You can disable the left sidebar and the Touch Bar interface (or trade their positions). You’ll also see alternatives to permit double taps whilst using your Apple Pencil or whether or not you see a pointer while using the Pencil.
But you also would possibly find those shortcuts beneficial. Here’s an outline of the entirety you’ll find.
Dock alignment. Press the effortlessly conveying your macOS dock over from the Mac itself (and faucet it once more to send it again).
Command (Hold all the way down to set the modifier key, which includes Command-K to open a new window. You can also double-tap it to fasten it in the region.)
- Option
- Control
- Shift
- Undo
- Show keyboard
- Disconnect Sidecar
Touch Bar. Much like the Touch Bar in your MacBook, this interface modification depends on which app you have opened.
How to arrange your iPad’s display with regards to your Mac’s display
The easiest way to set up your displays is to click on the blue rectangle in your Mac’s menu bar once your iPad is attached, after which clicking Open Display Preferences inside the menu pops up. You’ll then want to go to Arrangement in the menu that looks.
- You can also try this the long way:
- Open your Mac’s System Preferences.
- Press Displays.
- In the menu that pops up, pick the heading that asserts Arrangement.
From here you could arrange your presentations as needed. If you need to access your iPad’s show by moving your cursor off the left of Mac’s display, as an example, set up the blue display screen representing your iPad, so it’s to the left of Mac’s icon in the interface. (By default, Mac’s interface ought to have a white bar throughout the pinnacle.)
