Learn how to use your iPad as a second display with Sidecar, introduced in macOS Catalina.
In this lesson for What’s New in macOS Catalina, I look at how you can use your iPad as a second display for your Mac with Sidecar. With Sidecar and macOS Catalina, you can mirror your display on the iPad, or use it as a second display. When used as a second display, you can move windows from your Mac to your iPad. With Sidecar, you also have access to your Touch Bar (if your Mac has a Touch Bar), and other features. You can set if you want to show these and where you want to show these features on the iPad. See how all this works in my video on Sidecar and the Mac with macOS Catalina above.
Video Transcript (video also has closed captions):
In this video, we’re going to take a look at Sidecar with macOS Catalina. With Sidecar, what we’re able to do is we’re able to take an iPad and use it as a second display. We can mirror our Mac, or we can use it as a second display. Let’s see how this works. Let’s go to My Mac and My iPad. We can see I have My Mac here, and then I also have My iPad on the left. What I’m able to do with Sidecar here is to use my iPad as a separate display. I can use it as a second display, or I can mirror what is on my Mac. Before we see how this works, I first want to mention that you need to have a newer Mac and a newer iPad. This does not work on all Macs, and it doesn’t work on all iPads.
As an example, you’ll need a MacBook Pro that was introduced in 2016 or later, or a MacBook Air that was introduced in 2018 or later. You also need to have an iPad Pro or an iPad 6 generation, iPad mini 5th generation, or iPad Air 3rd generation. It’s not going to work on every iPad and every Mac. How do you know if it’ll work with your Mac and your iPad? Well, I have a link to Sidecar system requirements in the link below from Apple. Just take a look at that page, and then you’ll see links to where you can see if your iPad will work with it. I have an iPad Pro here, as well as a MacBook Pro 16 inch. Sidecar will work.
Now, we have a few different ways of getting to Sidecar. I’m going to show you how you get added through the system preferences because we have a few settings for this. Now, we go up to the Apple menu, and then we go over to our System Preferences. From here, what I need to do is I need to go to Sidecar. When I click on Sidecar, you’re going to have an option to connect it to your device, in my case, my iPad Pro. When I click on this, you’re going to see iPad Pro. If I were to select this, it would use my iPad Pro as a second display.
Let’s go ahead and do that. Select it, and now we can see that my iPad is a second display. What does that mean? Well, let’s take this window here. If I move it over to the left, you’re going to see I’m moving it over to my iPad. I take it from my iPad, and I can move it back over to my Mac. I can have an application open on my iPad as well as my Mac. Let’s go and open up Safari. I want to move this window over to my iPad. All I do is just take the toolbar and drag it over, and now it is on my iPad. I can still work on my Mac here, I can move this window around on my Mac, and I can also move the window around on my iPad. It is a second display. I’m going to close this.
Now, we do have a few options with this. You can see on the right here I have some options. I can show the sidebar, or what is the sidebar? If we go back over to the iPad, you’re going to see I have a sidebar on the left side. The sidebar or the sidebar here has separate touch buttons. I have a keyboard here. If I were to touch the keyboard on the iPad, it shows a keyboard, touch it again, it disappears. In addition to being just a display, we also have some of our touch capabilities with the iPad. I can move this sidebar here to the left or the right. We go back over to the Mac, and then, all I have to do is select this, and I can move it over to the right. If I don’t want to show it at all, I just deselect this.
I also have a touch bar; I have a MacBook Pro with a touch bar; this will be located at the bottom of my iPad. If I want to move it to the top, I select this, and I can move it to the top, I can also turn it off. Then, if I have an Apple Pencil, I can enable a double-tap on the Apple Pencil. We also have some of these same options up in the menu bar. You’re going to see I have this blue square; this is my Display menu extra. When I click on it, I’m able to disconnect it. It just turns it off. I can also set which display I want to mirror.
I have a couple of different displays connected to my MacBook Pro, so if I wanted to mirror one of these displays on my iPad Pro it’s going to show what is on these displays here; all I have to do is select which one I want to mirror. Now, I do not wish to mirror; I like to use it as a separate display, then, I have ‘use as separate display’ selected. We can set it to use it as a separate display, or we can mirror it. I can also hide my sidebar, and I can hide my touch bar. If I were to disconnect, I could also go back up to my display menu extra here and connect back up. I do not have to go through the Sidecar system preferences to connect. I can also just go to the menu extra here.
That’s a look at how Sidecar works on the Mac. Basically, with Sidecar, if you have a newer iPad, what you’re able to do is use your iPad as a separate display. You can mirror what is on your Mac, or you can use it as a separate display. All you have to do is just go to your menu bar and select your display extra menu. You can choose your iPad, and then it’ll use it as a separate display. You can also choose if you want to mirror it from that menu bar. You do have a few preferences, you go to your System Preferences and then go to Sidecar. From there, you can set where you want to show the sidebar if you want to show the sidebar and the touch bar.
That’s how you can use your iPad as a separate display using Sidecar with macOS Catalina.