The Magic of Universal Control
Finally, in January 2022, the magic returned.
Introduced at the 2021 WWDC, Universal Control was maybe the most anticipated feature of all Apple’s software features. Now, in the latest beta of Monterey and iPadOS, it is finally emerging.
Fun fact, it is really as magic as promised; once you get it to run. For the time being, it is considered a beta, which is kind of fun because unless you’re not enrolled into one of Apple’s multiple beta programmes, you don’t get it anyway. So, it’s a beta in a beta. Neat.
Does it work? Is it any good?
Oh, yes. There are limitations, though. Multiple iPads hooked to one MacBook do work, sometimes and only with hiccups. One Mac and one iPad, however, do work flawlessly.
I needed to restart both Mac and iPad after getting the latest beta installed to convince Universal Control to work. Since then, everything’s fine.
You can easily drag a picture from your Mac into a Pages document open on your iPad, and it reacts as expected. Using the Display preference pane in Systems Settings you can place the connected device wherever you want, and as soon as your mouse gets into that area, you don’t even feel any delay when the trackpad and keyboard appear on the connected device.
You just need to remember that an iPad is an iPad, running iPadOS, and a Mac is a Mac. If you try to something the other cannot do — dragging a Safari window from the Mac to the iPad, for example, you’ll be disappointed. If, like me, you’re just lazy and want to use your one set of trackpad & keyboard on your Mac &iPad — this is your playground.
Fun facts
- Are you, by chance one of those unlucky enough to have to use Teams? Well, there is something funny for you.
Dragging and dropping into Teams is hit or miss (especially considering screenshots). The fun part being: if you use Teams on an iPad and use Finder’s copy on the Mac and paste the screenshot into Teams on the iPad, it simply works. - If Universal Control works for your setup, you forget it is there within minutes. Which, in my book, is the best award any software can get, ever.
Requirements
Well, a recent Mac (everything M1 is fine) and any iPad capable of running the latest beta with an A12 or later do work, at least as far as I know. Honestly, as much as I like Apple’s products, I only have so many of them.
Once that’s done, you don’t need to do anything at all.
Which is how I wrote this piece. For some reason, I do enjoy my iPad’s portrait mode more than any high-resolution display. Consider this: in the background I do have an LG 5K display hooked up to my MacBook, but in front of that is this iPad Pro on its stand, blotting out almost 25% of the absolutely fabulous display. That’s how this has been created. Not to mention that, with Universal Control, I can seamlessly switch from one to the other.
If it doesn’t work
We-hell, then you’re screwed, basically. One of the little things I noticed is, when you’re having two accounts on your Mac with the same Apple ID (don’t ask), it only seems to work with the first account you’ve had any success in getting Universal Control to function. The second account will be ignored, even if it is the same ID you’re logged into Apple’s services.
Small Update
If you’re using two accounts on your Mac, but only one Apple ID for both of them and want to use Universal Control on the other account it only works if you log out of iCloud, restart, log into iCloud, and restart. Of course, that disables it on the other account. But the same procedure gets you there, eventually.
