iPad Everything you wanted to know about using Sidecar on iPad

[Novius89]

Looking forward to hearing back in a week or so.

One suggestion if you do contact T-Mobile that may or may not be relevant. If you’ve had this router for 3-years, it’s likely you’re paying too much for your current plan. When you talk on the phone, see whether you could get them to reduce the price on your current plan for the same speeds, or alternatively, give you a faster Wi-Fi speed for your current pricing.

Uuhm, i didn't do anything yet with my home network because everything else works just fine.
I planned to do this tomorrow...

BUT BIG TWIST INCOMING:

Beginning of this evening i wanted to do some work for my study and connected my second monitor and the ipad with sidecar in the left, like always.

A popup came on my main screen from sidecar (forgot to make a screenshot ...)

"For a more stable connection we stopped wifi on your ipad. If you want to connect the ipad with wifi, connect the ipad with a cable to your computer."

And happy to say it is working perfect for 4 hours straight: no hiccups, lag, poor connection.

And i talk about wireless sidecar 🙂

In the drop down menu wifi is indeed disconnected, but for the rest i can not find any info on some update concerning sidecar or something online.
I don't see it connected via Bluetooth with the macbook.

Funny... sometimes problems solve itself it seems (Apple in this case)

Edit:

I renew my internet every year, just happen to stay with t-mobile for 3 consecutive years, as it is also the carrier for me and my girlfriend mobile plans. So we get discounts on the home internet and our mobile plans.
We live in a really old appartement complex (old hospital from the 1880's), so top of the line internet (glasvezel in dutch) is not available here.

Edit: screenshot added. It says it when i connect (and the ipad is connected with wifi)

When i enable wifi the connection drops and is terrible again, and it recovers when i disable it.

 

[BhaveshUK]

There is hover now and I heard it even works in Sidecar! But I think it really only works with the newest M2 iPad Pros, and the feature might still be in beta. I saw a video of someone on Reddit using it on an M1 iPad, but it didn’t seem to work well. They had to hold the tip super close to the screen, like a couple mm, whereas I believe on an M2 one can hold it up to 12mm away.

I’ve now had a chance to look at this feature on YouTube. It seems incredibly promising and I can imagine it replacing a Wacom drawing tablet in the future. Will be interesting to see how this develops over the coming months and years.

 

[BhaveshUK]

Uuhm, i didn't do anything yet with my home network because everything else works just fine.
I planned to do this tomorrow...

BUT BIG TWIST INCOMING:

Beginning of this evening i wanted to do some work for my study and connected my second monitor and the ipad with sidecar in the left, like always.

A popup came on my main screen from sidecar (forgot to make a screenshot ...)

"For a more stable connection we stopped wifi on your ipad. If you want to connect the ipad with wifi, connect the ipad with a cable to your computer."

And happy to say it is working perfect for 4 hours straight: no hiccups, lag, poor connection.

And i talk about wireless sidecar 🙂

In the drop down menu wifi is indeed disconnected, but for the rest i can not find any info on some update concerning sidecar or something online.
I don't see it connected via Bluetooth with the macbook.

Funny... sometimes problems solve itself it seems (Apple in this case)

Edit:

I renew my internet every year, just happen to stay with t-mobile for 3 consecutive years, as it is also the carrier for me and my girlfriend mobile plans. So we get discounts on the home internet and our mobile plans.
We live in a really old appartement complex (old hospital from the 1880's), so top of the line internet (glasvezel in dutch) is not available here.

Edit: screenshot added. It says it when i connect (and the ipad is connected with wifi)

When i enable wifi the connection drops and is terrible again, and it recovers when i disable it.

Really happy to hear the problem is solving itself. Awesome when that happens!

Give us a shout if the problems recurs or you want support around something else on your iPad 😁

 

[mattspace]

I'm not sure if this is Sidecar, or not - but I recall there being a feature for the iPad Pro where it could act as a drawing canvas for a Mac, but not a standard desktop monitor - you'd have your app open on the Mac (eg Affinity Photo), and it would have a dedicated pencil specific UI on the iPad, but you'd still do menu work etc on the Mac.

Is that still a thing, or was it a handoff feature, separate from Sidecar?

 

[phrehdd]

I'm not sure if this is Sidecar, or not - but I recall there being a feature for the iPad Pro where it could act as a drawing canvas for a Mac, but not a standard desktop monitor - you'd have your app open on the Mac (eg Affinity Photo), and it would have a dedicated pencil specific UI on the iPad, but you'd still do menu work etc on the Mac.

Is that still a thing, or was it a handoff feature, separate from Sidecar?

There are a couple of 3rd party solutions that allowed a computer to use an iPad with the stylus to do art and photo edit. Astropad app and their LUNA hardware were one and there are one or two others. Very similar to sidecar but add some benefits.

 

[mattspace]

There are a couple of 3rd party solutions that allowed a computer to use an iPad with the stylus to do art and photo edit. Astropad app and their LUNA hardware were one and there are one or two others. Very similar to sidecar but add some benefits.

No what I'm thinking about wasn't that IIRC - I remember it being an Apple built in feature that launched with the iPad Pro (or soon after) that made the iPP a drawing tablet, but NOT a desktop display. What I can't work out is if it was the original implementation of sidecar not offering desktop extension mode, or if it was a different thing that required you to have a companion app on the iPad for each App you wanted to use it with on the Mac - eg if you wanted to use it for Affinity Photo, you had to have the iPad version of Affinity Photo as well - eg was it a mode for handoff / continuity. I do recall it wasn't just opening the document in the iOS app, it was a non-desktop drawing-slate-only mode for the iPad to work with the mac app.

I seem to recall when the iPad as a drawing tablet for the Mac feature first came out, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth that it couldn't be used as a normal extended desktop display, and was only a dedicated drawing space.

 

[BhaveshUK]

I'm not sure if this is Sidecar, or not - but I recall there being a feature for the iPad Pro where it could act as a drawing canvas for a Mac, but not a standard desktop monitor - you'd have your app open on the Mac (eg Affinity Photo), and it would have a dedicated pencil specific UI on the iPad, but you'd still do menu work etc on the Mac.

Is that still a thing, or was it a handoff feature, separate from Sidecar?

This is not something I have come across within Sidecar if I’m understanding correctly. Intrigued to hear from other posters if they can better direct you.

 

[mattspace]

This is not something I have come across within Sidecar if I’m understanding correctly. Intrigued to hear from other posters if they can better direct you.

I could be mistaken, as said, I'm going from memory, but I recall some debate at the time over some aspect of Sidecar that wasn't making the iPad a standard display, like a Cintiq, but rather that it was only a dedicated drawing window - ie you didn't get the mac menubar etc, you'd still drive the Mac from its normal display, and the iPad would just be a drawing window.

I could be wrong though.