Universal Control is a feature that brings amazing new capabilities to LIT SUITE customers who also use a Mac. If you’ve heard of Universal Control, you probably already know that it allows you to use a single keyboard and mouse to control both your Mac and iPad at the same time. Having your mouse pointer seamlessly move back and forth between your Mac to your iPad, and using the one keyboard to type, feels magical. But one of the most powerful features of Universal Control is the ability to wirelessly drag and drop files between devices!
Universal Control v. Sidecar
You may have heard of a Mac feature called Sidecar, which allows you to extend your Mac display and use your iPad as a second monitor. Universal Control is a more powerful feature where you can use Mac and iPad apps, each on their own device, but interact with both devices using a single keyboard and mouse.
Universal Control was designed for people who use both macOS and iPadOS in their daily workflows. In addition, Universal Control allows you to control an iPad or Mac from either device, meaning that you can control your iPad with your Mac mouse and keyboard, and you can also control your Mac from your iPad Magic Keyboard!
Here’s How It Works
Once you’ve turned on Universal Control, it is very easy to simply select a file and drag it over from your Mac onto your iPad or vice-versa. To drag a file from your Mac into an iPad app, you’ll first have to open the iPad app. For example, to drag files from your Mac desktop into any of the LIT SUITE apps, you’ll want to open the Case File you’re adding documents to. You can drag files into the top level of the Case File, or into a sub-folder.
Here’s Why It Works
With the Multitasking capability we added to the LIT SUITE, your LIT SUITE apps are compatible with drop. This means that you can drag files from other apps on your iPad into any of your LIT SUITE apps. And now that capability is extended to apps that are on your Mac!
Here’s How To Set It Up
Both devices must be signed in to iCloud with the same Apple ID. For wireless use, both devices must be within 30 feet of each other with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Handoff enabled. The Mac and iPad also cannot be sharing a cellular connection via Personal Hotspot.
There are also some minimum hardware and software requirements. You must have a compatible Mac using macOS Monterey 12.3 or later, and a compatible iPad using iPadOS 15.4 or later. Check out this Apple support article for all the details on compatibility: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212757
The above may seem like a lot at first, but most macOS and iPadOS users will have the above requirements already configured, and will simply have to update the software on each device to try Universal Control.
Universal Control offers fantastic new capabilities that will help LIT SUITE customers who also work on macOS to further streamline their practices. The ability to control both Mac and iPad devices with a single mouse and keyboard makes setting up and getting to work faster and easier than ever, at the office or at home. And best of all, drag and drop with Universal Control adds yet another layer of efficiency to importing your evidence into your LIT SUITE apps.