How to Turn Your iPad into an External Display for Your iMac

Hello YouTube, it's Detroit Borg and today I'm going to show you how to turn your iPad into an external display for your iMac. Now, the first thing you'll have to do is install an app called Air Display, which can be obtained from the iTunes store. Once you've installed Air Display, go ahead and launch it.

Once the app launches, I'm given instructions to install the server onto my Mac, so it's telling me to go to my Mac and enter Avatron/ad. This process allows your iPad to connect to your iMac over your local Wi-Fi, which is essential for this feature to work. Now, it's worth noting that this only works over the same Wi-Fi network; it will not work over 3G.

Now that I have the app running on the iPad, all I have to do is go to my Mac to activate the connection. Once you install the app on the computer, you'll see an icon in the top system tray there. I can select "Michael's iPad 3G" that will establish a connection with the iPad. You'll see the screen flash and essentially, I have a second desktop on my iPad.

For anyone who has used a side-by-side display setup, this should be pretty familiar. This is basically like connecting another monitor directly to your computer, although the connection is through Wi-Fi and all you have to do is drag Windows to this display. Let's go ahead and drag my email right here and slide over because the iPad is a touch screen. This essentially gives me a touch-screen external display, which is kind of neat but it is limited.

It's not like having the touch screen functionality on your iPad running its native apps; all you can do is basically click or select. Of course, you can just use the mouse like you would on an external display, but if you really wanted to, you can go ahead and select with your finger and move this around. Unfortunately, you can't pinch the zoom or scroll even multi-touch doesn't work, but you can click and hold the scroll bar or if you want to resize the window.

This frees up my desktop and allows me to keep an eye on my email while I'm doing something else that's filling up the screen on my desktop. Now, because the iPad is using Wi-Fi to connect to the iMac, there's a lot of lag, so you can't use an iPad to playback video.

Let's grab something from iTunes and show you what I mean; plain Star Trek here, I'm going to drag it over to the iPad. You can see it's pretty jerky and that's because it's running like a VNC client basically capturing images of a desktop on the iMac so it's not a direct feed like a real display would be; it's a virtual feed through Wi-Fi.

So, once again, that's Detroit Borg with a demonstration of how to turn your iPad into a secondary display. Thanks for watching.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello YouTube It's Detroit Borg and today I'm going to show you how to turn your iPad into an external display for your iMac now the first thing you'll have to do is install an app called air display and you can get this from the iTune store once you've installed air display go ahead and launch it once the app launches I'm given instructions to install the server onto my Mac so it's telling me to go to my Mac enter Avatron /ad once you go to the website you'll be prompted to install a server that server runs in the background and allows your iPad to connect to your iMac over your local Wi-Fi now it's important to note that this only works over the same Wi-Fi network it will not work over 3G now that I have the app running on the iPad all I have to do is go to my Mac to activate the connection once you install the app on the computer you'll see an icon in the top system tray there I can select Michael's iPad 3G that will establish a connection with the iPad you'll see the screen flash and essentially I have a second desktop on my iPad now for anybody who has used a side-by-side display setup uh this should be pretty familiar this is basically like connecting another monitor directly to your computer although the connection is through Wi-Fi and all you have to do is drag Windows to this display so let's go ahead and drag my email right here and slide over because the iPad is a touchcreen this essentially gives me a touch screen external display which is kind of neat but it is limited it's not like having the touchcreen functionality on your iPad running its native apps all you can do is basically click or select and it's a little Clum of course you can just use the mouse like you would on an external display but if you really wanted to you can go ahead and select with your finger you can move this around unfortunately you can't pinch the zoom or your scroll even multi touch doesn't work but you can click and hold the scroll bar or if you want to resize the window so this frees up my desktop allows me to keep an eye on my email while I'm doing something else that's filling up the screen on my desktop now because the iPad is using Wi-Fi to connect to the iMac that means there's a lot of lag so you can't use an iPad to playback video so let's grab something from iTunes and show you what I mean so plain Star Trek here I'm going to drag it over to the iPad now you can see it's pretty hky jerky and that's because it's running like a VNC client basically capturing images of a desktop on the iMac so it's not a direct feed like a real display would be it's a virtual feed through Wi-Fi so once again that's Detroit Borg with a demonstration of how to turn your iPad into a secondary display thanks for watchinghello YouTube It's Detroit Borg and today I'm going to show you how to turn your iPad into an external display for your iMac now the first thing you'll have to do is install an app called air display and you can get this from the iTune store once you've installed air display go ahead and launch it once the app launches I'm given instructions to install the server onto my Mac so it's telling me to go to my Mac enter Avatron /ad once you go to the website you'll be prompted to install a server that server runs in the background and allows your iPad to connect to your iMac over your local Wi-Fi now it's important to note that this only works over the same Wi-Fi network it will not work over 3G now that I have the app running on the iPad all I have to do is go to my Mac to activate the connection once you install the app on the computer you'll see an icon in the top system tray there I can select Michael's iPad 3G that will establish a connection with the iPad you'll see the screen flash and essentially I have a second desktop on my iPad now for anybody who has used a side-by-side display setup uh this should be pretty familiar this is basically like connecting another monitor directly to your computer although the connection is through Wi-Fi and all you have to do is drag Windows to this display so let's go ahead and drag my email right here and slide over because the iPad is a touchcreen this essentially gives me a touch screen external display which is kind of neat but it is limited it's not like having the touchcreen functionality on your iPad running its native apps all you can do is basically click or select and it's a little Clum of course you can just use the mouse like you would on an external display but if you really wanted to you can go ahead and select with your finger you can move this around unfortunately you can't pinch the zoom or your scroll even multi touch doesn't work but you can click and hold the scroll bar or if you want to resize the window so this frees up my desktop allows me to keep an eye on my email while I'm doing something else that's filling up the screen on my desktop now because the iPad is using Wi-Fi to connect to the iMac that means there's a lot of lag so you can't use an iPad to playback video so let's grab something from iTunes and show you what I mean so plain Star Trek here I'm going to drag it over to the iPad now you can see it's pretty hky jerky and that's because it's running like a VNC client basically capturing images of a desktop on the iMac so it's not a direct feed like a real display would be it's a virtual feed through Wi-Fi so once again that's Detroit Borg with a demonstration of how to turn your iPad into a secondary display thanks for watching\n"