Universal Control: A Game-Changer for Seamless Device Control

It's finally here: Universal Control, the feature Apple has been teasing us with since WWDc 2021. This game-changing technology allows one device's keyboard and mouse to control another's seamlessly, and I'm excited to dive hands-on with it.

For those who need a refresher, Universal Control is all about taking control of your devices. With this feature, you can take your Magic Trackpad and drag your cursor from one screen to the other without any apps or settings needing to be turned on. The same applies when using your Mac's keyboard on an iPad Pro - just switch between devices and start working. This seamless transition is made possible by Universal Control.

The feature allows for bidirectional control, so you can use your Mac's keyboard and mouse to control your iPad Pro, and vice versa. However, there are a few limitations currently in place. One notable limitation is that trackpad gestures from Mac OS don't seem to work on the iPad Pro using its Magic Keyboard. For example, I couldn't swipe between apps or use three-finger swipe up for Mission Control at least not yet.

On the other hand, iPad OS gestures using the Macbook's TrackPad work just fine without any issues. This is a significant advantage and will undoubtedly be beneficial for users who prefer this setup. Furthermore, Universal Control has some limitations when it comes to transferring files between devices. For instance, if you take a screenshot on an iPad Pro, it needs to go directly into an app that supports it - you can't just put it on the home screen.

However, when using Universal Control, the experience is incredibly smooth and seamless. I've been blown away by how quickly and effortlessly this feature works. The speed at which files are transferred between devices has also impressed me. It's clear that Apple has put in a lot of effort to ensure a smooth user experience.

In my initial testing, however, Universal Control didn't work immediately for me. It took some troubleshooting - restarting both devices and re-enabling the connection - to get it working as expected. However, this was just an isolated issue, and once I sorted it out, everything worked fine.

One of the best things about Universal Control is that you don't need to mess with settings or configurations; it's already on and works seamlessly. You can also see more settings for this feature in both Mac OS and iPad OS, but I'm not sure why you'd want to - it just works as advertised.

As with any new technology, there may be kinks to work out, and Universal Control is no exception. However, from what I've seen so far, the benefits far outweigh the limitations. If you have tried using Universal Control or have thoughts on this feature, please share them in the comments below.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eni'm absolutely blown away by this i mean watch you just take your cursor and you drag it over and now it's on the ipad like what and i can open up any of these files and there it is it's just i mean what universal control is finally here you remember universal control you remember that thing that apple talked about like six months ago and then just kind of ghosted us with it and said yeah you'll get it sometime well it's here in mac os 12.3 and ipad os 15.4 betas they were just released today so we're going to go hands-on with this new universal control feature and for those of you who understandably need a refresher since again it's been quite a bit since wwdc 2021 universal control allows one device's keyboard and mouse to control another's seamlessly so let me just show you how incredible this is so for example this macbook pro right here i can take my magic trackpad and drag my cursor all the way from my mac to my ipad pro and it just magically moves from one screen to the other there's no apps or no settings that i need to go and turn on they're already on they already work they're already connected it just works seamlessly so now i can use my macbook pros keyboard on my ipad and just use that specific device to control my ipad and then this works the other way around too so i can take my ipad pro's magic keyboard and trackpad combo case that i have here and drag that cursor to my mac and boom it just works over there as well now there are a few limitations right now when it comes to ipad pro to mac os at least one that i've noticed that's pretty important and that's just the trackpad gestures from uh for mac os they don't seem to work using the ipad pro's magic keyboard so i can't swipe between apps i can't do the three finger swipe up for mission control at least not right now it is worth mentioning again these features are still in beta so who knows what the proper release will look like the good news is ipad os gestures using the macbook's track pad those work just fine there's no problems there whatsoever i also tried dragging a bunch of random things like text and files and links and whatever from one device specifically mac os to ipad and so if you do that it actually needs to go directly into an app that supports that file so you can't just take this screenshot and put it on the home screen that's not how that works on ipad os so it makes sense so if i take this image and i bring it into the notes app then yeah that app supports this image and it works just fine and if you want to put it into the files app you can do that too now on the other side here if i take the ipad and drag a file or folder from the ipad to the macbook pro that actually works just fine you can place it on your desktop because that's how mac os works so it makes sense that this is how it works when you're using universal control and when i dragged a folder over or a file over it seemed to transfer at pretty fast speeds too so that's another thing that i'm just kind of blown away by uh and i'm gonna say that again i'm absolutely blown away by how incredibly quick and seamless this feature really is i'm not sure why i kind of didn't doubt that it wasn't going to work but the more they kept pushing this off and the more you kind of forget that it's a thing you just kind of think it might be too good to be true but i'm not disappointed at all as of right now i haven't run into really any huge issues but it is worth mentioning that when i first installed this it did not work and it might not work for you some people it did for me it did not i had to restart my ipad pro restart my macbook pro and then everything worked fine and then there was one time where it just kind of stopped working and i went up to the mac os menu bar here i clicked on the display icon and i went down to the connection between the ipad and the macbook i just unchecked that and then reconnected it and everything was fine i didn't have to restart it hopefully that doesn't really happen all too often it's been a short amount of time but in that short amount of time that was really the only other issue aside from its initial uh you know ability to get it to work but after that everything works totally fine you can also see more settings for this on mac os as well as ipad os but you really shouldn't need to mess with it again it just works it's already on and it works so well of course i'd love to know your thoughts on this i know i've been hyping it up so if you've been using it at all please let me know in those comments down below this has been dan with mac rumors thanks so much for watching and i hope to see you around in the next videoi'm absolutely blown away by this i mean watch you just take your cursor and you drag it over and now it's on the ipad like what and i can open up any of these files and there it is it's just i mean what universal control is finally here you remember universal control you remember that thing that apple talked about like six months ago and then just kind of ghosted us with it and said yeah you'll get it sometime well it's here in mac os 12.3 and ipad os 15.4 betas they were just released today so we're going to go hands-on with this new universal control feature and for those of you who understandably need a refresher since again it's been quite a bit since wwdc 2021 universal control allows one device's keyboard and mouse to control another's seamlessly so let me just show you how incredible this is so for example this macbook pro right here i can take my magic trackpad and drag my cursor all the way from my mac to my ipad pro and it just magically moves from one screen to the other there's no apps or no settings that i need to go and turn on they're already on they already work they're already connected it just works seamlessly so now i can use my macbook pros keyboard on my ipad and just use that specific device to control my ipad and then this works the other way around too so i can take my ipad pro's magic keyboard and trackpad combo case that i have here and drag that cursor to my mac and boom it just works over there as well now there are a few limitations right now when it comes to ipad pro to mac os at least one that i've noticed that's pretty important and that's just the trackpad gestures from uh for mac os they don't seem to work using the ipad pro's magic keyboard so i can't swipe between apps i can't do the three finger swipe up for mission control at least not right now it is worth mentioning again these features are still in beta so who knows what the proper release will look like the good news is ipad os gestures using the macbook's track pad those work just fine there's no problems there whatsoever i also tried dragging a bunch of random things like text and files and links and whatever from one device specifically mac os to ipad and so if you do that it actually needs to go directly into an app that supports that file so you can't just take this screenshot and put it on the home screen that's not how that works on ipad os so it makes sense so if i take this image and i bring it into the notes app then yeah that app supports this image and it works just fine and if you want to put it into the files app you can do that too now on the other side here if i take the ipad and drag a file or folder from the ipad to the macbook pro that actually works just fine you can place it on your desktop because that's how mac os works so it makes sense that this is how it works when you're using universal control and when i dragged a folder over or a file over it seemed to transfer at pretty fast speeds too so that's another thing that i'm just kind of blown away by uh and i'm gonna say that again i'm absolutely blown away by how incredibly quick and seamless this feature really is i'm not sure why i kind of didn't doubt that it wasn't going to work but the more they kept pushing this off and the more you kind of forget that it's a thing you just kind of think it might be too good to be true but i'm not disappointed at all as of right now i haven't run into really any huge issues but it is worth mentioning that when i first installed this it did not work and it might not work for you some people it did for me it did not i had to restart my ipad pro restart my macbook pro and then everything worked fine and then there was one time where it just kind of stopped working and i went up to the mac os menu bar here i clicked on the display icon and i went down to the connection between the ipad and the macbook i just unchecked that and then reconnected it and everything was fine i didn't have to restart it hopefully that doesn't really happen all too often it's been a short amount of time but in that short amount of time that was really the only other issue aside from its initial uh you know ability to get it to work but after that everything works totally fine you can also see more settings for this on mac os as well as ipad os but you really shouldn't need to mess with it again it just works it's already on and it works so well of course i'd love to know your thoughts on this i know i've been hyping it up so if you've been using it at all please let me know in those comments down below this has been dan with mac rumors thanks so much for watching and i hope to see you around in the next video\n"