How to use an iPad as a second screen for your Mac

If you inquire me, you can in no way have much too a lot of screens. One particular for e mail! 1 for browsing! A single for files! Screens for all people!

On the other hand, not all people has the luxury of cramming a sprawling selection of displays onto a desk, or has adequate inputs on their pcs to help these types of a set up.

If you’ve got an iPad and a Mac, however, it’s dead uncomplicated to use the iPad as a companion check for your Mac. Here’s how.

Sidecar needs

We’re going to be employing Apple’s absolutely free, created-in Sidecar application to pull this off. For Sidecar to function, you are going to want just one of the subsequent personal computers:

• A MacBook or MacBook Professional from 2016 or afterwards
• A MacBook Air from 2018 or later on
• An iMac from 2017 or afterwards (or the 2015 27-inch iMac Retina 5K)
• A Mac Professional from 2019, iMac Pro, or Mac Studio
• A Mac Mini from 2018 or afterwards

And then as considerably as iPads go, you’ll want any design iPad Pro, a sixth-technology or later iPad, a fifth-gen or later on iPad Mini, or a 3rd-gen or later iPad Air.

The Mac requirements to be operating MacOS Catalina or afterwards, and the iPad requires to be managing iPadOS 13 or afterwards. The two devices require to be signed in with the similar Apple ID as nicely.

Now, you can do this wirelessly or you can plug the iPad into your Mac. I advise the latter to preserve your iPad’s battery existence. To go the wi-fi route, nevertheless, make confident Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Handoff are enabled on both equally products. You are almost certainly by now employing Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and I can tell you that Handoff was enabled by default on both of those my Mac and my iPad.

Sending a window from your Mac to your iPad

When you have achieved all the needs earlier mentioned, just hover more than the tiny green button in the prime-still left corner of the Mac window that you want to go, and choose “Move to iPad” from the menu.

By default, your Mac will feel your iPad is positioned to the right. You can alter this by heading into the Apple Menu > Procedure Preferences > Normal > Shows, and then virtually transferring your iPad to its actual area.

After which is established up, you can then just drag windows back again and forth between your Mac and your iPad, the exact same as you would with any other monitors. Or just place the iPad on the proper and skip this phase.

Further tweaks

You are going to recognize that your iPad has a sidebar on the lefthand aspect of the monitor. You can use this to disguise and demonstrate the menu bar, hide and exhibit the Dock, and facilitate some simple essential presses.

You can hide this sidebar to give your self a tiny far more actual estate. From your Mac, click the Apple Menu > Process Preferences > Sidecar, and convert off the sidebar.

And if you’d like to use an actual application on your iPad while it is getting made use of as a next keep an eye on, simply swipe up from the bottom and you will be back in iPad manner. You’ll detect the Sidecar icon on your iPad’s house display faucet it to swap the iPad back to monitor manner.

There are a handful of more sophisticated issues you can do as effectively, this kind of as utilizing an Apple Pencil or a digital Touch Bar. Check out out Apple’s Sidecar aid web site for more details.