Move it back to the Mac, and you control the Mac. When the mouse is on the iPad screen, both it and the keyboard on your Mac control the iPad. Keep dragging and pow, the bump breaks free into a circular mouse pointer. It’s a sort of indicator that the iPad is aware you’re trying to drag a mouse into it. One note is that if you have lots of compatible devices, Monterey assumes that you’re dragging towards the last iPad or Mac you interacted with.Īt this point, a Wi-Fi Direct connection is made and the iPad will show a small bar on the side with a little bump. So there’s no UWB location detection, just good old assumption. When you do, the Mac will assume that you’re trying to drag the mouse over to another device, in this case the iPad. Then, you start up Universal Control by dragging your mouse pointer all the way to the left or right edge of your Mac’s screen, then a little bit beyond that edge. Of course, all the devices here need to be on the same iCloud account for this to work. When the devices are close enough, their Bluetooth modules let each other know. Universal Control is built off the same Continuity and Handoff features that have long been a part of iOS and macOS. Instead, it just waits until you try to drag the cursor past one side of the screen or the other, and assumes the device you want to reach is on that side.įirst, you need to get the iPad and Mac relatively close to each other. The answer to the above question is: It doesn’t.

The Verge has the answer to this, and some other questions.

We got a demo of how Universal Control works during Apple’s demo yesterday, but it left a few unanswered questions.įor example, we saw Craig Federighi drag his cursor from a Mac on the left to an iPad on the right – but how did Universal Control know where the iPad was in relation to the Mac? …

Controlling the elements wow