An Apple he has thrown out Universal Control is a long-awaited feature for beta testers. The functionality is available as part of a developer beta for macOS Monterey 12.3 and iPad OS 15.4 and is intended to bridge the gap between the two devices.
The Universal Control feature was first announced at WWDC last year and allows you to use a single keyboard, mouse, and trackpad across multiple Macs and iPads. One can easily transfer their files between tablets and computers by drag and drop while eliminating the need for AirDrop, cloud uploads, or wired data transfers.
Apple Universal Remote: How does it work?
The feature is enabled by default in both versions and simply requires the user to sign in to the same iCloud account. Similar to how the dual screen setup works, when you push the mouse pointer to the edge of the screen, it moves to the next screen, or in this case, the next device.
Once configured, devices remain connected unless put to sleep or moved out of range: 10 meters (30 feet). The company also notes that both devices do not need to have a cellular and internet subscription. Multiple devices can also be set to automatically reconnect next time or easily turned off through settings.
Craig Federeighi’s 2021 presentation also pointed out how the MacBook’s touchpad works like gestures, similar to what you might see on an iPhone or iPad. With just one click, he was able to close the Procreate document on the iPad. Flipping between pages and typing also works seamlessly on all devices.
Pro users can also add an iMac to the mix and use the external magic keyboard and mouse to navigate between panels seamlessly from the trackpad. The beta update is currently only available for Mac and iPad operating systems, although one for iPhone is also expected to be released in the future.
What devices are compatible with Apple Universal Control?
The feature is currently only available as part of a beta update and is supported on the following Macs: MacBook Pro, MacBook (2016 and later), MacBook Air (2018 and later), iMac released in 2017, iMac (Retina 5K), 27-inch Late 2015), iMac Pro, Mac mini released in 2018 or later, Mac Pro from 2019 onwards.
For iPad compatibility, the update must be available on iPad Pro, iPad Air (3rd generation or later), iPad (6th generation or later), and iPad mini 5th generation and later.
Both connected devices must be running the latest beta version of macOS 12.3 and iPadOS 15.4, which are available to both the public and developers.
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