I have an iPad 3rd generation from 2012 that is nearly useless to me because it's so out of date and slow, but I was thinking of a few potential uses for it. These are all related to using it as an external display for a computer, Mac or PC either is fine. I know there have been apps in the past that allow this but I don't know of any at the moment and in particular any that support iOS 9 still and the iPad 3. If anyone knows of apps that will allow me to do this, please let me know. Input lag is expected.
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iPad Use iPad 3rd generation as display for Mac and/or Windows
- Thread starter retta283
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Before sidecar, I used to use air display. I think it was while I was using iOS 9, but I’m not sure if it still does. Grow, it always worked fine for me & I liked it better than the other one I also had (Duet Display) as it allowed a connection over wifi, but both worked ok for me when I used it.
Also FWIW, I found the iPad to be an ok but not great external display. Perfect for travel, but not nearly as good as a real external monitor
The only application that is the least expensive and allows you to extend your computer display to an older iOS 8 and up devices (iPhone/iPad) is YAMdisplay (Yet Another Monitor display). There is a free 7 minute demo that gives you the option to test out whether your iPad 3 works with your Mac or not and with the applications you want to take advantage of the 2nd monitor. Download the Mac display driver from this site -- https://www.yamdisplay.com/about/. Other options forces you to either buy an expensive monthly package or cost twice as much as YAM and does nothing more than what YAM can do. The only requirement is that your Mac has to be somewhat current -- check requirements. My Macbook Air couldn't support Apple Sidecar, but will support YAM. There is also YAMpad which basically turns your latest iPad into a drawing tablet for the Mac.
Since the popularity of working from home and using Zoom conference, YAM has made my iPad Mini 1 very useful again as a small second 7.9" display for my Macbook Air. It's not a replacement for a true monitor, but if I go mobile and tele-conference somewhere, the second monitor can become immensely useful for me.
The USB cable option is the cheapest and also it will have no lag issues especially with my older iPad Mini.
Hope this helps.
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Duet Display is probably the most promising option, but IIRC it's a paid app on the iOS side. So far the best one I found was called Splashtop XDisplay. That one uses wired connection and supports iOS 7 and up. It works okay, totally free but it can't handle the 2048x1536 res very well, the framerate is very low. 1024x768 works almost perfectly, I can even watch a YouTube video pretty smooth on it this way. It does look pretty pixelated though.
2048x1536 makes the text look tiny since it doesn't scale like a Mac Retina display, but for certain things it would've been useful. Just out of curiosity I pulled out my cracked iPad 2 and tried it, works near perfect for most uses with this app. To my amazement, the app allowed me to use the iPad 2 at 1280x960 resolution, which is higher than the native panel resolution. It works perfect with this res, not too much lag added either. This seems to be the best use case for this app. Even fired up a few old games I had (Oblivion for example) and it was actually pretty smooth overall, lag was all from the main computer.
The app also lets you use the touchscreen as a mouse cursor, although it doesn't work the greatest. This may or may not interfere with some apps, for example when I played Oblivion the mouse cursor in the menus was all jerky when I had the iPad plugged in. I may buy Duet display and see how laggy it is in comparison, because ideally I would like to use it at 2048x1536. Will test YAM out too tonight, just curious to see which one is best. I wish Duet had a trial mode.
2048x1536 makes the text look tiny since it doesn't scale like a Mac Retina display, but for certain things it would've been useful. Just out of curiosity I pulled out my cracked iPad 2 and tried it, works near perfect for most uses with this app. To my amazement, the app allowed me to use the iPad 2 at 1280x960 resolution, which is higher than the native panel resolution. It works perfect with this res, not too much lag added either. This seems to be the best use case for this app. Even fired up a few old games I had (Oblivion for example) and it was actually pretty smooth overall, lag was all from the main computer.
The app also lets you use the touchscreen as a mouse cursor, although it doesn't work the greatest. This may or may not interfere with some apps, for example when I played Oblivion the mouse cursor in the menus was all jerky when I had the iPad plugged in. I may buy Duet display and see how laggy it is in comparison, because ideally I would like to use it at 2048x1536. Will test YAM out too tonight, just curious to see which one is best. I wish Duet had a trial mode.