Universal Control: A Deep Dive into Apple's Latest Innovation

Apple has been working on a new feature called Universal Control that allows users to control multiple devices with a single input method. In this deep dive, we'll explore what Universal Control is, how it works, and its limitations.

Using Universal Control in a Mac Setup

Universal Control is a feature that uses Ultra Wideband (UWB) technology to track the location of your device and other connected devices. When you connect multiple devices using Universal Control, the feature can identify the exact position of each device in relation to the others. This allows for seamless control over all devices with a single input method.

To use Universal Control, simply drag and drop connected devices onto the display preferences icon in the System Preferences window. Once you've rearranged your devices, you can start using Universal Control by moving your cursor between them. This feature is perfect for users who want to manage multiple devices with ease.

Removing Devices from the Chain

One of the unique features of Universal Control is its ability to remove devices from the chain without disrupting control. When you break a device in the middle of the chain, Universal Control will automatically reconfigure to maintain seamless control over the remaining devices. This feature ensures that users can easily manage their device setup without worrying about losing control.

However, there are some limitations to this feature. Users have reported issues with connecting multiple devices beyond three at a time. When trying to connect a fourth device via Display Preferences, the app will not proceed due to an "unable to connect" error message. While users can manually reconfigure their setup, it's unclear why Apple has implemented such a limitation.

Using Universal Control with iPads

Another interesting feature of Universal Control is its ability to use iPads as termination points. This means that iPads serve as endpoints for Universal Control, allowing users to control multiple devices using a single input method. However, there's a catch: iPads do not allow the invocation of Universal Control, meaning users cannot start controlling their devices from an iPad.

To work around this limitation, users can manually rearrange their device setup to ensure that the Macs are at the end of the chain. This allows for seamless control over all devices using Universal Control.

Universal Control and Sidecar

In a surprising twist, it appears that Universal Control and Sidecar can be used simultaneously. By exploiting a glitch in the beta version, users can enable both features at the same time, allowing them to control their devices with one input method while also using Sidecar for extended displays.

This feature is still experimental and may not work as intended outside of the beta environment. However, its presence raises interesting questions about Apple's future plans for Universal Control and how it might be used in conjunction with other features like Sidecar.

Conclusion

Universal Control is an innovative feature that allows users to control multiple devices with a single input method. While it has some limitations, particularly when it comes to connecting more than three devices, the potential for seamless device management is undeniable. As Apple continues to refine and improve this feature, we can expect to see more exciting developments in the world of Universal Control.

What do you think about Universal Control? Will you be using it day-to-day? Share your thoughts and feedback in the comments below. If you appreciate content like this, please thumbs up to let us know that our videos are worth watching. Don't forget to subscribe for more Mac-related content and stay tuned for upcoming videos.

Author: Jeff Benjamin

Nine to Five Mac

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso in this video we're going to talk in depth about the universal control beta how does it work how many devices can you use it with and much much more so let's take a look at universal control in the mac os beta in depth all right so universal control of course works with macs and ipads and as you can see i have a whole stack of macs and ipads here that we're going to be testing this out with and i'll even show you some tips and handy tricks so of course universal control was revealed at wwdc 2021 craig federighi showcased it in action on a video between a mac and an ipad and an imac as well so universal control beta works very similarly to what craig showed in that video so you have a single like mouse and keyboard attached to a main mac and then you can use that to control other devices like an ipad or another mac so here you can see i'm using the keyboard and mouse for my mac to fully control my ipad pro but not only can you control devices you can also drag and drop files between devices so i can drag an image from my mac to my ipad and vice versa as well so i can drag from my ipad back to the mac so on the mac you need to be running the mac os 12.3 beta and on the ipad you need to be running ipad os 15.4 beta 1 or higher so as i stated before it's in the name universal control allows you to control an ipad or mac from your main mouse and keyboard but what it doesn't allow you to do is to use that ipad or mac as an external display for instance here i have the finder window on my mac i can't drag that over to my ipad same thing goes for safari window i can't drag a safari window from the mac to the ipad with that being said you can use your mac or your ipad as an external display for your main mac if you go to system preferences displays you'll see the option to add a display and there i can invoke sidecar for the ipad and use it as an external display and for macs i can set up an external airplay destination and use that as an external display as well now let's talk about device compatibility so universal control works with the macbook pro 2016 or later macbook 2016 or later macbook air 2018 or later imax imac pro and so on right the main takeaway is that universal control will also work with intel max as well as you can see uc works with the ipad pro ipad air third generation or later ipad 6th generation or later or ipad mini 5 relator so pretty well rounded list it'll work with imacs it'll work with the macbook pro of course it'll work with the mac mini uh it'll work with all types of ipads and even intel max as you can see right here that's really cool now there are some additional requirements you'll need to keep in mind first and foremost you need to have all devices logged into icloud with the same apple id so that's important across all devices you want to use universal control with now you also want to make sure that cursor and keyboard beta is enabled under general airplay and handoff that should be enabled by default on your ipads but that is a requirement as well so here i have universal control running on my ipad on my macbook pro 14-inch in this setup right here you can see it easy peasy now how to invoke universal control now the obvious way to invoke universal control is to push your mouse cursor through from your main mac over to an ipad or another mac as you can see right here there's a little indicator showing that i'm pushing through with the cursor and then you just push all the way through and that starts the universal control session between those two devices so now i can control my ipad using the mouse and keyboard connect it to my mac super simple super easy and of course i can move the cursor back and forth between both devices that is great so it's not just limited to the ipad you can do the same thing with another mac as long as it's an eligible mac so here's my macbook pro and again just simply push through with my mouse cursor all the way over and there we go now i can move those between the two and look universal control also works with ipads in portrait mode as you can see right here so just move my mouse all the way through while oriented in portrait mode and even mac os will reflect that the ipad is in portrait mode just like that so that can be handy when browsing a twitter or other timeline based app so all you need to do is open up system preferences and then go to where it says displays and then you'll see add display in the bottom left-hand corner you want to click on that and then you'll see a heading link keyboard and mouse so your eligible devices will be right underneath that heading so i have my ipad pro and silver which is my 14 inch macbook pro so i just click ipad pro and then you can see right there it connects to my ipad pro and it's displayed right there within the display preferences now i recommend going to system preferences dock in minibar and then selecting display and then choosing to show in menu bar and selecting always instead of when active that way you can quickly access the display shortcut from the menu bar and enable or disable universal control just like this so we just click the little airplay icon there in the menu bar and there you see a link keyboard and mouse too so there you can quickly enable or disable universal control with just a click if you don't want to use the push through method so here i can click to enable my ipad pro 12.9 inch and i can also do so with silver which is the 14 inch macbook pro just click there and both of those will be enabled just like that you can also click to disable if you like so when you go back to display preferences you can see that both of those devices are enabled so we know we can control ipads and macs but one of the benefits of universal control is being able to move your cursor across the entire setup so i had it on my ipad and move over to my main mac and then move right over to the macbook pro 14 inch just like that but you can also move items directly from an ipad here in procreate and move that over to my mac in keynote drop it just like that and there you go super simple super easy illustrate on your ipad move to your mac now in this example i can move all the way across all the way over to my other macbook pro drop in the final cut pro like that pretty cool but also you can control other devices with each of the inputs available to you so here on the ipad i have the magic keyboard i can use that to control my max granted at least in this beta you don't get all the gesture support with the ipad magic keyboard on the mac so just keep that in mind now let's talk about some universal control advanced preferences so if we go to displays and then we select advanced there you will see the advanced preferences for universal control so the first option is basically just a global setting to allow your cursor and keyboard to move between any nearby mac or ipad so that basically is enabling or disabling universal control outright that option must be enabled now the second option push through the edge of a display to connect to a nearby mac or ipad that's basically that manual push through with your cursor you can enable or disable that if you disable it you'll have to use the display preferences or the menu bar shortcut to connect to other devices and then this last option automatically reconnect to any nearby mac or ipad so if a previous connection was made this will basically resume that connection once you bring the ipad or mac back online so you can see i have it connected here when i close the lid you can see display preferences that goes away now when i reopen you'll notice it automatically reconnects i don't have to do anything manually just like that now it's important to note that universal control is not spatially aware doesn't know where one device is in relation to another so for instance if i invoke universal control on the left side of my main mac even though my ipad is situated on the right side it has no idea where it is so you'll see it come through on the right side of the ipad and then when i go to display preferences you can see the ipad is located on the left but it's actually on the right you see what i'm saying here so you don't actually have spatial awareness now the good news is that in mac os 12.3 beta there's hints of ultra wideband technology coming to max and that could be one potential use case for having ultra wide band technology in a mac it would know where exactly that mac is in relation to other devices assuming those other devices also have ultra wide band chips inside but thankfully you can manually rearrange devices via the display preferences here so all you do you simply just click and drag any of the universal control connected devices so here i can just drag this macbook pro you can know it's a macbook pro by the menu bar at the top by the way ipads don't have the menu bar but you can simply drag and rearrange to your liking so if if the arrangement is off like i showed you earlier you can manually rearrange to fix it now what happens when you remove a device in the middle that's between your main mac and another device so the ipad on the left side the macbook pro in the middle so when i break that chain universal control will automatically reconfigure at least it should i've noticed some bugs but again just keep in mind that this is still in beta trick question how many devices are supported by universal control at the same time well i'm going to go ahead you see i have two devices connected my main mac in my ipad i'm going to try to connect a third and silver connect so that's my macbook pro i'm going to try to connect a fourth now in liquid error i get unable to connect to users macbook pro to connect to users mac pro disconnect another device so it appears you can only have three devices connected in total for instance if i try to add a fourth device via display preferences i don't get an error but nothing happens at all so what to do about all those devices well let me show you something here so i'm going to push through manually on the first mac and now i have two macs connected i'm going to push through on that mac to my ipad and now i have three devices connected an ipad and two macs now ipads serve as termination points so you can't actually invoke universal control from an ipad so i have four devices two macbooks an ipad and now i have a macbook connected to the ipad on the right side so five total devices but the problem is like i said ipad service termination points you can't invoke universal control from an ipad so what to do well i had to simply manually rearrange so that the macs are at the end of the chain so to speak and then i can continue to add devices via the mac at the end of the chain does that make sense all right so now that i have that mac moved over i can add yes indeed another ipad for three devices on the left side for a total of six devices and now i'm going to add another ipad on the right side for a total of seven devices that's all the devices i have folks so you can see all seven of these devices connected via universal control now i don't know if this is going to be a thing in the actual shipping version but in the beta yeah you can add all seven devices and watch my cursor as i move it between all these devices i can control all of them via one input method my magic mouse magic keyboard sorry for the shaky cam but as you can see moving across all devices now wouldn't it be cool if you could connect universal control and sidecar at the same time yeah you can't do that normally because mac os simply doesn't allow you to but i've noticed a glitch and i can get this glitch working with a little bit of persistence here i'm able to actually have both universal control and sidecar enabled at the same time you can see them right here you can see my ipad 12.9 inch has both the sidecar which is right here and universal control at the same time so that means that i can see my cursor here on my mac i can move that over that's universal control same input and i can launch other apps of course controlling with my max keyboard and mouse and then i can also launch sidecar and use the ipad pro as an external display just like this so that's pretty cool right but obviously this is just a bug or a glitch i can repeat it and i can actually reproduce it but it does take a little bit of work on my end to make that happen uh nonetheless i would like to see this as an actual feature in future versions of mac os what do you guys think so ladies and gentlemen that has been a deep dive with universal control what do you guys think about this feature do you think it's truly useful will you use it day to day let me know and also if you appreciated this deep dive if you appreciate videos like this then be sure to thumbs up because that allows other people to know that hey this video is legit so folks i will catch you in an upcoming video stay tuned we have much more mac content around the corner this is jeff benjamin with nine to five mac take care youso in this video we're going to talk in depth about the universal control beta how does it work how many devices can you use it with and much much more so let's take a look at universal control in the mac os beta in depth all right so universal control of course works with macs and ipads and as you can see i have a whole stack of macs and ipads here that we're going to be testing this out with and i'll even show you some tips and handy tricks so of course universal control was revealed at wwdc 2021 craig federighi showcased it in action on a video between a mac and an ipad and an imac as well so universal control beta works very similarly to what craig showed in that video so you have a single like mouse and keyboard attached to a main mac and then you can use that to control other devices like an ipad or another mac so here you can see i'm using the keyboard and mouse for my mac to fully control my ipad pro but not only can you control devices you can also drag and drop files between devices so i can drag an image from my mac to my ipad and vice versa as well so i can drag from my ipad back to the mac so on the mac you need to be running the mac os 12.3 beta and on the ipad you need to be running ipad os 15.4 beta 1 or higher so as i stated before it's in the name universal control allows you to control an ipad or mac from your main mouse and keyboard but what it doesn't allow you to do is to use that ipad or mac as an external display for instance here i have the finder window on my mac i can't drag that over to my ipad same thing goes for safari window i can't drag a safari window from the mac to the ipad with that being said you can use your mac or your ipad as an external display for your main mac if you go to system preferences displays you'll see the option to add a display and there i can invoke sidecar for the ipad and use it as an external display and for macs i can set up an external airplay destination and use that as an external display as well now let's talk about device compatibility so universal control works with the macbook pro 2016 or later macbook 2016 or later macbook air 2018 or later imax imac pro and so on right the main takeaway is that universal control will also work with intel max as well as you can see uc works with the ipad pro ipad air third generation or later ipad 6th generation or later or ipad mini 5 relator so pretty well rounded list it'll work with imacs it'll work with the macbook pro of course it'll work with the mac mini uh it'll work with all types of ipads and even intel max as you can see right here that's really cool now there are some additional requirements you'll need to keep in mind first and foremost you need to have all devices logged into icloud with the same apple id so that's important across all devices you want to use universal control with now you also want to make sure that cursor and keyboard beta is enabled under general airplay and handoff that should be enabled by default on your ipads but that is a requirement as well so here i have universal control running on my ipad on my macbook pro 14-inch in this setup right here you can see it easy peasy now how to invoke universal control now the obvious way to invoke universal control is to push your mouse cursor through from your main mac over to an ipad or another mac as you can see right here there's a little indicator showing that i'm pushing through with the cursor and then you just push all the way through and that starts the universal control session between those two devices so now i can control my ipad using the mouse and keyboard connect it to my mac super simple super easy and of course i can move the cursor back and forth between both devices that is great so it's not just limited to the ipad you can do the same thing with another mac as long as it's an eligible mac so here's my macbook pro and again just simply push through with my mouse cursor all the way over and there we go now i can move those between the two and look universal control also works with ipads in portrait mode as you can see right here so just move my mouse all the way through while oriented in portrait mode and even mac os will reflect that the ipad is in portrait mode just like that so that can be handy when browsing a twitter or other timeline based app so all you need to do is open up system preferences and then go to where it says displays and then you'll see add display in the bottom left-hand corner you want to click on that and then you'll see a heading link keyboard and mouse so your eligible devices will be right underneath that heading so i have my ipad pro and silver which is my 14 inch macbook pro so i just click ipad pro and then you can see right there it connects to my ipad pro and it's displayed right there within the display preferences now i recommend going to system preferences dock in minibar and then selecting display and then choosing to show in menu bar and selecting always instead of when active that way you can quickly access the display shortcut from the menu bar and enable or disable universal control just like this so we just click the little airplay icon there in the menu bar and there you see a link keyboard and mouse too so there you can quickly enable or disable universal control with just a click if you don't want to use the push through method so here i can click to enable my ipad pro 12.9 inch and i can also do so with silver which is the 14 inch macbook pro just click there and both of those will be enabled just like that you can also click to disable if you like so when you go back to display preferences you can see that both of those devices are enabled so we know we can control ipads and macs but one of the benefits of universal control is being able to move your cursor across the entire setup so i had it on my ipad and move over to my main mac and then move right over to the macbook pro 14 inch just like that but you can also move items directly from an ipad here in procreate and move that over to my mac in keynote drop it just like that and there you go super simple super easy illustrate on your ipad move to your mac now in this example i can move all the way across all the way over to my other macbook pro drop in the final cut pro like that pretty cool but also you can control other devices with each of the inputs available to you so here on the ipad i have the magic keyboard i can use that to control my max granted at least in this beta you don't get all the gesture support with the ipad magic keyboard on the mac so just keep that in mind now let's talk about some universal control advanced preferences so if we go to displays and then we select advanced there you will see the advanced preferences for universal control so the first option is basically just a global setting to allow your cursor and keyboard to move between any nearby mac or ipad so that basically is enabling or disabling universal control outright that option must be enabled now the second option push through the edge of a display to connect to a nearby mac or ipad that's basically that manual push through with your cursor you can enable or disable that if you disable it you'll have to use the display preferences or the menu bar shortcut to connect to other devices and then this last option automatically reconnect to any nearby mac or ipad so if a previous connection was made this will basically resume that connection once you bring the ipad or mac back online so you can see i have it connected here when i close the lid you can see display preferences that goes away now when i reopen you'll notice it automatically reconnects i don't have to do anything manually just like that now it's important to note that universal control is not spatially aware doesn't know where one device is in relation to another so for instance if i invoke universal control on the left side of my main mac even though my ipad is situated on the right side it has no idea where it is so you'll see it come through on the right side of the ipad and then when i go to display preferences you can see the ipad is located on the left but it's actually on the right you see what i'm saying here so you don't actually have spatial awareness now the good news is that in mac os 12.3 beta there's hints of ultra wideband technology coming to max and that could be one potential use case for having ultra wide band technology in a mac it would know where exactly that mac is in relation to other devices assuming those other devices also have ultra wide band chips inside but thankfully you can manually rearrange devices via the display preferences here so all you do you simply just click and drag any of the universal control connected devices so here i can just drag this macbook pro you can know it's a macbook pro by the menu bar at the top by the way ipads don't have the menu bar but you can simply drag and rearrange to your liking so if if the arrangement is off like i showed you earlier you can manually rearrange to fix it now what happens when you remove a device in the middle that's between your main mac and another device so the ipad on the left side the macbook pro in the middle so when i break that chain universal control will automatically reconfigure at least it should i've noticed some bugs but again just keep in mind that this is still in beta trick question how many devices are supported by universal control at the same time well i'm going to go ahead you see i have two devices connected my main mac in my ipad i'm going to try to connect a third and silver connect so that's my macbook pro i'm going to try to connect a fourth now in liquid error i get unable to connect to users macbook pro to connect to users mac pro disconnect another device so it appears you can only have three devices connected in total for instance if i try to add a fourth device via display preferences i don't get an error but nothing happens at all so what to do about all those devices well let me show you something here so i'm going to push through manually on the first mac and now i have two macs connected i'm going to push through on that mac to my ipad and now i have three devices connected an ipad and two macs now ipads serve as termination points so you can't actually invoke universal control from an ipad so i have four devices two macbooks an ipad and now i have a macbook connected to the ipad on the right side so five total devices but the problem is like i said ipad service termination points you can't invoke universal control from an ipad so what to do well i had to simply manually rearrange so that the macs are at the end of the chain so to speak and then i can continue to add devices via the mac at the end of the chain does that make sense all right so now that i have that mac moved over i can add yes indeed another ipad for three devices on the left side for a total of six devices and now i'm going to add another ipad on the right side for a total of seven devices that's all the devices i have folks so you can see all seven of these devices connected via universal control now i don't know if this is going to be a thing in the actual shipping version but in the beta yeah you can add all seven devices and watch my cursor as i move it between all these devices i can control all of them via one input method my magic mouse magic keyboard sorry for the shaky cam but as you can see moving across all devices now wouldn't it be cool if you could connect universal control and sidecar at the same time yeah you can't do that normally because mac os simply doesn't allow you to but i've noticed a glitch and i can get this glitch working with a little bit of persistence here i'm able to actually have both universal control and sidecar enabled at the same time you can see them right here you can see my ipad 12.9 inch has both the sidecar which is right here and universal control at the same time so that means that i can see my cursor here on my mac i can move that over that's universal control same input and i can launch other apps of course controlling with my max keyboard and mouse and then i can also launch sidecar and use the ipad pro as an external display just like this so that's pretty cool right but obviously this is just a bug or a glitch i can repeat it and i can actually reproduce it but it does take a little bit of work on my end to make that happen uh nonetheless i would like to see this as an actual feature in future versions of mac os what do you guys think so ladies and gentlemen that has been a deep dive with universal control what do you guys think about this feature do you think it's truly useful will you use it day to day let me know and also if you appreciated this deep dive if you appreciate videos like this then be sure to thumbs up because that allows other people to know that hey this video is legit so folks i will catch you in an upcoming video stay tuned we have much more mac content around the corner this is jeff benjamin with nine to five mac take care you\n"