If you’re someone who owns both an iPad and a MacBook, did you know that you can use your iPad as a second screen for your Mac? This can be done wirelessly or through a USBC cable. The great thing is that you don’t need any additional software for this, you just use the capabilities of Mac OS and iPad OS called Sidecar.
To get started, make sure that you’re signed into the same iCloud account on your iPad Pro as you are on your Mac. From there, you should see it show up by clicking on Control Center and then going to screen mirroring. If you don’t have that option, you can also go to Settings > Displays and then down at the bottom you should be able to add a display and see it show up in there. All you need to do is select that iPad and it’ll set it up as a second display on your Mac.
There are a few things that are useful about this setup. Number one, you can mirror your display over to your iPad and then use your Mac apps with the touch screen on the iPad. This is where it really comes in handy doing it wirelessly because you can kind of sit around the house and use your Mac apps on your iPad just kick back on the couch or something. It actually works pretty well, but sometimes there’s a little delay with the Wi-Fi.
By far the way that most people use it is with kind of a traditional dual screen setup. This is done by setting up the iPad as a second display and not as a mirrored display. Then, you can drag your applications back and forth between them. This is especially useful if you’re doing research or taking notes while watching a video or vice versa.
There are a few options that you can set up with this setup. You can set up a touch bar on that iPad and then you can also set up the sidebar. The sidebar just has some shortcuts like a command key and a couple other keys that you may want to use. That’s really useful if you’re using it wirelessly away from your Mac that way you have access to some of those command keys that you might need.
It’s a super easy setup and everything’s built into iPad OS and Mac OS. You don’t need any extra software like we mentioned before. You do get better performance with that wired connection so you might want to just carry around a USBC Cable in your bag. That way you can have a great dual screen setup wherever you are.
Hopefully, you found this article informative. If you have any questions on anything we went over, leave those down in the comments section below and we’ll be happy to help you out.