Using a mouse with an iPad

It has been possible to use an external keyboard with an iPad since the very first iPad was released in 2010.  But whenever you needed to switch from typing to selecting something on the screen, you have always had to reach up your hands from the keyboard and touch your screen with your finger.  Although the touch interface is fantastic when I’m using my iPad as a tablet, when my iPad is propped up to be a screen behind my keyboard, it is more awkward to have to touch the screen.  Thus, I’ve long wanted to have optional mouse support on an iPad, for those times when I’m using my iPad the same way that I would typically use a computer.  With iPadOS 13, we finally have that capability.  It is limited, but it works well, and it helps me to be more productive with my iPad.  Here are details on how it works, including the (numerous) steps necessary to get started.

Pairing a mouse

This is Apple’s first implementation of mouse support on an iPad, and Apple has prioritized mouse support for folks with special accessibility needs.  Thus, to pair a mouse and configure your settings, you need to open the Settings app and go to Accessibility -> Touch -> AssistiveTouch.  On the AssistiveTouch screen you can turn on AssistiveTouch (so that it recognizes a mouse) and then you configure your mouse by using the Pointer Devices section.

Tap Devices to pair your mouse.  You can use three types of mouse.  First, you can use most Bluetooth mice.   (Surprisingly, Apple’s own Magic Mouse 2 and Magic Trackpad don’t seem to work; I’ve read that the Magic Trackpad 2 works but only with a Lightning cord, not over Bluetooth.)

Second, you can connect a wired mouse.  Since wired mice use USB, you will need a connector.  If you have a third generation iPad Pro with USB-C, the HyperDrive 6-in-1 that I reviewed in August works great for this.  I plugged in an old Apple wired mouse and it just worked immediately.  You can also use Apple’s $29 Lightning to USB Camera Adapter (for an iPad that uses Lightning) or its $19 USB-C to USB Adapter (for the third generation iPad Pro).  Leif Johnson of Macworld reports that if you use a wired mouse that requires anything more than minimal power, you might find that older iPads which use a Lightning connector cannot provide enough power.  However, if you have a third generation iPad Pro — the one with USB-C — it provides more than enough power for a mouse.

Third, you can connect a wireless mouse that uses a USB dongle.  For many years now, I’ve had a Logitech wireless mouse with a dongle for use with my PC laptop.  The model that I have (C-UAY59) is no longer for sale, but it is similar to the Logitech M525 that you can get for $19.99 on Amazon.

One you have paired a device, tap or click on it on this screen and you can assign the buttons on your mouse.  By default your left-click button will be assigned to Single-Tap.  There is no right-click on the iPad, but in iPadOS 13, a Long Press is similar, so I assigned my right-click button to Long Press.  And on my mouse, pressing down on the scroll wheel is a third button, so I assigned that to Home so that when I press it, it is similar to swiping up from the bottom of the screen, showing the app icons on my Home screen.

There are a huge number of shortcuts that you can assign to buttons, so if you are using a mouse with a lot of buttons, you can get pretty creative on what you assign.  For example, you can assign shortcuts that you create in the Shortcuts app to a mouse button, which allows for lots of sophistication.

On the AssistiveTouch screen, you can also change the tracking speed.  I also recommend that you select Pointer Style and make the pointer size as small as possible.  That still makes it a circle much larger than a typical computer cursor — remember that you are using the mouse to replace the tip of a finger — but it is small enough that it doesn’t get much in the way.  On that same screen, under Visual, I recommend that you also turn on Auto-Hide so that the circle mouse circle disappears if you are not moving the mouse. I have mine set to Auto-Hide in five seconds, and that seems to work very well.

Apple has a support page with information on these and many other mouse-related controls that you can change in the Settings app.

Here is one final tip for your initial configuration.  I recommend that, in the Settings app, you go to Control Center -> Customize Controls and then add Accessibility Shortcuts to the “Include” section of the Control Center.  And then, in the Accessibility section of the Settings app, under General, tap Accessibility Shortcut -> AssistiveTouch.  That way, in the future, you can just swipe down from the top right of your screen to bring up the Control Center and then tap the icon for Accessibility Shortcuts to easily turn on or off the mouse function without having to dig into the Settings menus to do so.

Using a mouse

When you move the pointer around the screen with the mouse, it is like you are hovering the tip of your finger over the screen but not yet touching the screen.  And then whenever you press the left mouse button, it is as if the tip of your finger is touching the screen.  Thus, to scroll up or down, you hold down the left mouse button and move the mouse while you are still holding down.  If your mouse has a scroll wheel, it is supported in some apps on some functions, but not all.  For example, the scroll wheel works fairly well in Apple’s built-in apps like Safari and Mail.  The scroll wheel mostly works in third-party apps, but I’ve seen inconsistent results in apps like Microsoft Word and Things.

But what works very well is moving the cursor around the screen and selecting text, which is the main thing that I want when I am typing a long email or editing a Microsoft Word document with an external keyboard.  For example, in Word, I can use the mouse to select a paragraph, which makes it easy to cut it and paste it somewhere else in the document.

There are still times when I prefer to use my fingers on the iPad screen, such as to invoke multi-finger gestures like pinching two fingers in or out to zoom in or out.  Having said that, thanks to keyboard and mouse shortcuts,  you no longer need to use your fingers for many tasks.  For example, switching apps by using Command-Tab is much better than putting all five fingers on the screen and swipe right or left to change apps.

Although using a mouse with an iPad is not exactly the same as using a mouse with a computer, it still works very well when you are using your iPad and an external keyboard to work with text, whether you are drafting or modifying a document or just writing a long email.

Citrix

Sometimes I need to work in a PC environment on my iPad to get something done for work.  I currently have two ways of doing that.  First, I use the LogMeIn app on my iPad to connect to the PC in my office.  Using an external mouse works reasonably well for that, but the scroll wheel doesn’t work, and a right-click on the mouse doesn’t equal a mouse-click in the PC environment.  But it still works well enough that I find a mouse useful in LogMeIn.

Sometimes I use the Citrix Workspace app to connect to a Citrix virtual environment at my law firm.  With iPadOS 13, a normal mouse will generally work, but just like in the LogMeIn app there are some things that it cannot do like right click, use a scroll wheel, and perform certain hover events.  However, Citrix sells a $60 mouse called the Citrix X1 Mouse.  As explained on this page of the Citrix website, if you use the X1 Mouse with the Citrix Workspace app, it works just like a normal mouse on a PC (so you can right-click and scroll), and as a bonus you can also use the X1 Mouse with other apps to perform normal mouse functions that are enabled in iPadOS 13.  I haven’t tried the X1 Mouse myself, but if you plan to purchase a Bluetooth mouse to use with your iPad and if your law firm uses Citrix and you plan to use it regularly, I can see some real advantages to buying that Citrix mouse instead of a standard Bluetooth mouse.

Conclusion

The mouse support in iPadOS 13 is limited, but it does work, and in my tests over the last week or so I have found it very helpful.  I suspect that almost every time that I use an external keyboard with my iPad Pro, I’ll also take out my mouse so that I can use it too.  Hopefully this is just a first step and Apple will improve mouse support in the future.  Nevertheless, it works well enough now that if you have ever missed having access to a mouse while you use an external keyboard with an iPad, you should definitely try it and see what you think.