Month: April 2021

I’m a big fan of the keyboard that I use in my office, the Logitech MX Keys, which I reviewed in 2020.  Not only is it a great extended keyboard on which I enjoy typing, but there are three buttons that I can press to switch between a Bluetooth connection to my PC, my iPad, or my iPhone.  As a result, I can easily use a single keyboard with multiple devices. 

At home, I use with my iMac an Apple Magic Keyboard (with keypad), and it doesn’t have that cool feature to switch the Bluetooth connection.  Thus, if my iPad is next to my home computer and I want to use the keyboard connected to my iMac with the iPad, I need to manually remove the Bluetooth connection with my Mac and then find and connect the keyboard to my iPad using Bluetooth.  And then, when I’m done, I need to do the reverse to restore the connection to my Mac  It’s enough of a pain that I almost never do it.  But now I’m using an app on my Mac that makes this easy:  KeyPad by ToolBunch LLC. 

KeyPad is an app that you can download for free from the App Store on the Mac, and it costs $2.99 to unlock all of the features.  When you launch KeyPad on your Mac for the first time, you need to open the Settings app on your iPad (or iPhone), select Bluetooth, and then select your computer from the My Devices section.  You won’t have to do this again.

In the future, simply launch KeyPad on your Mac and it will connect to your iPad. 

At this point, anything that you type using your Mac’s keyboard will be typed on your iPad, just as if the keyboard was directly connected to the iPad.  To stop the connection, you can just switch to another program on your Mac.  KeyPad only does its magic when it is the front application on your Mac.  Thus, when you want to use KeyPad again, just bring KeyPad to the front again.  One way to do this is to click the KeyPad icon in the Dock on your Mac.  KeyPad also gives you a shortcut:  if the KeyPad app is running and in the background, just hold down Command-Option-P and the app will come back to the front and connect to your iPad again.  Or, if you are already connect to your iPad, that same shortcut will also move KeyPad to the background so that your keyboard works with your Mac again.

If that was all that KeyPad did, I would find the program incredibly useful.  But the program can also make the mouse connect to your Mac work with your iPad.  To trigger this, just press Control-Option on your Mac at the same time.  Press Control-Option again to make your mouse work with your Mac again.  Unlike the keyboard feature of KeyPad, which works great, I find the mouse support to be a little jumpy on my iPad.  Maybe that has something to do with the specific mouse that I’m using (a Kensington ExpertMouse trackball).

KeyPad has another feature:  shortcuts.  When you are using just the keyboard function of KeyPad (letting your mouse control your Mac), there are shortcuts at the bottom of the window that you can click with your mouse to trigger certain actions on the iPad.  These shortcuts are:

• Power button (lock the iPad)
• Menu button (the same as the home button on the iPad)
• Paste
• Keyboard (toggle show/hide the on-screen keyboard)
• Search
• Rewind
• Play/Pause
• Fast-forward
• Mute
• Volume down
• Volume up
• Home

I have found this KeyPad app to be incredibly useful.  For example, sometimes I will be using my Mac but I’m not connected to my firm network so I don’t have anything open on my Mac to use my firm email, but my iPad is right there on my desk.  I simply launch Mail on my iPad, make KeyPad active, and then I can type a new email or respond to an email using the keyboard that is right in front of me.  When I want to go back to using my Mac, I can either use my mouse on my Mac to switch to another app, or better yet, just use the shortcut Command-Option-P.

I often use KeyPad to type something that is just a few words.  Without the KeyPad app, it would never be worth going through all of the trouble to connect my Mac’s keyboard to the iPad just to make it easier to type a few words.  But with KeyPad, it just takes a fraction of a second to type Command-Option-P, type what I need to type, and then use Command-Option-P again to return to my Mac.

KeyPad is a great little app, and the magic that it provides is easily worth the $3 price.

Click here (on your Mac) to download KeyPad from the Mac App Store (free; $2.99 to unlock all features)

It seems that Apple is very close to the release of iOS 14.5, and I cannot wait.  This is the release that will let you unlock your iPhone even if you are wearing a mask (preventing Face ID from working) so long as you are wearing your Apple Watch.  I’m getting my second dose of the vaccine later today (woo-hoo!) but I suspect that wearing a mask will continue to be a thing for quite a while.  Matthew Panzarino of TechCrunch reports on another new feature coming in iOS 14.5.  In the past, the iPhone would assume that you want a female voice for Siri unless you change it.  (In the United States, at least; in some other countries, the default is the male voice, unless you change it.)  But when you install iOS 14.5, you select your preferred voice at the outset.  There are also two brand new Siri voices to pick from.  And there is more as well.  iOS 14.5 will be a nice update.  And now, the news of note from the past week:

• In an article for Slaw, legal technology experts Sharon Nelson and John Simek explain why, before long, lawyers may not have to worry about passwords, instead providing authentication based on biometrics (like Face ID) and hardware security keys.  In the meantime, however, I strongly encourage that you use a password manager.
• The apps TrialPad and DocReviewPad now support bookmarks in PDF files, as explained in this LitSoftware blog post.
• Illinois attorney John Voorhees of MacStories reviews the HoverBar Duo, an iPad stand that holds your iPad up as if it were a monitor.
• Tim Cook noted on Twitter that Apple celebrated its 45th birthday on April 1, 2021.
• Reuters reports that airlines may soon require the use of an iPhone app to confirm that you have received the COVID-19 vaccine before allowing you to get on an airplane.
• Mike Schmitz of The Sweet Setup names Timery the best time-tracking app. 
• For All Mankind is one of my favorite shows on Apple TV+ — heck, it is one of my favorite shows of the last few years — and it is currently in the middle of its second season.  Last Friday’s episode was one of the best of the series, and today’s episode is also quite good.  Jeff Wilser of GQ discusses the show and explains why more people should check it out.
• Ed Hardy of Cult of Mac reports that there are three Apple TV+ shows with 100% approval ratings on Rotten Tomatoes:  Dickinson, For All Mankind, and The Snoopy Show.  Those are great shows, but somehow Ted Lasso only has a 91% critic score (and a 98% audience score) even though that is definitely one of the best shows on Apple TV+.
• Dan Moren of Six Colors reports that Apple’s WWDC developer conference will begin on June 7.  That is when I expect to see Apple first preview iOS 15, which I expect to be released this Fall.
• Jake Peterson of Gadget Hacks notes that there is a Code Scanner app on the iPhone that you may not know about.  You can also just use the Camera app to scan many codes, such as QR codes.
• And finally, I have fond memories for many older operating systems that I used long ago, such as the ones on the Sinclair ZX81 that I used for many years and on the Commodore 64 that I used after that.  I do not have any fond memories of using DOS, except perhaps that I remember having to use it to launch WordPerfect 5.1 on some PCs when I was a summer law clerk in 1992.  But if you do have fond memories of DOS, the Will It Work? channel on YouTube shows in a video out how to get DOS running on an iPhone and then install some DOS games from a disk.  Very impressive: