With the announcement of iOS 13 and iPadOS 13, Apple surprised the world by adding support for mice. Mouse support is included in iOS 13 for iPhone. It will arrive on iPads with iPadOS 13, scheduled for September 30.
It’s still early days for mouse support on iPhone and iPad, and the feature isn’t even enabled by default. Let’s take a look at how to enable it, which devices it works with, and what are the benefits of using a pointing device on an operating system that’s been designed from the ground up for touch input.
Mouse Implementation on iPhone and iPad
In its current state, mouse support feels more like finger simulation than proper mouse control. Apple hasn’t made any changes to the way the operating system works when you’re using it with a mouse. iOS and iPadOS are each still a pure touch-based OS.
One example of this is in how text manipulation works with the mouse. On a regular computer, you would move your pointer over the text you want to select and then click and drag. But that doesn’t work on the mobile OS. You either have to double-click then drag, or double click to select then drag the text selection marker and move it.
Even this doesn’t work quite as you’d expect. When you double-click and drag, you’ll select the entirety of the word rather than making a selection from the exact location of your pointer. It sounds like a small issue, and we didn’t find it difficult to adjust to, but it still feels more like touch simulation than proper mouse control.
Another example of this is button mapping. You can map your mouse buttons to common iOS and iPadOS functions. By default, your left mouse button will “single-tap” just like your finger would.
There’s no way to add a “left mouse button” or “right mouse button” action because the OS wasn’t designed to receive inputs from a mouse.
It’s unclear whether Apple will expand the concept in the future and equip its mobile OS’ with the ability to accept proper mouse inputs. This would undoubtedly push the iPad Pro further into laptop replacement territory, a path that Apple has been treading very carefully.
