The buttons I use on my Logitech mouse to move back and forward in the web browser, for example, simply aren’t supported in iPadOS. It’s early days and these features might well come in later updates, but it’s not quite reached desktop levels of support yet.įinally, forget about any extra buttons, other than left, right and scroll wheel. For example, when playing with an image in Photos or Lightroom, you would expect the scroll wheel to zoom the image like it does on a desktop, but it doesn’t. Some expected behaviors are yet to be implemented, too. ( Correction: there is, in fact, a setting to control scroll speed in the Accessibility > Pointer Control settings. There’s no means to adjust this speed in Settings, either, which is frustrating. The default scrolling speed is very slow, meaning you’re constantly dragging your finger down the scroll wheel to read web pages or documents. That’s not to say everything about the iPad mouse implementation is perfect. If you drag the mouse off the bottom of the screen, the Dock hovers into view, allowing you to switch or dismiss apps with ease.
It’s worked flawlessly in my tests so far.Īpple’s also done well to mirror the behavior of the macOS Dock on the iPad. And Apple has implemented these controls superbly – a small grey dot appears on the screen instead of a pointer, switching to a bar-like cursor when you need the fine precision of placing the cursor in text fields. Triaging emails, hitting links on web pages, striking icons and emojis in Slack and a dozen other tasks are that much easier with the precision of a mouse. It’s not only the fiddly, complex jobs that mouse controls are good for. Precise work in apps such as Lightroom is a joy Barry Collins