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)