I have 2 macbook pros in clamshell that I swap between using a KVM switch. I have to manually re-add my iPad as a linked keyboard/mouse every time I swap macs. Note that I can't enable "**Push through the edge of a display...**" or "**Automatically reconnect to any nearby Mac or iPad**" because then it will connect both my iPad *and* other macbook (but I only want the iPad to connect). Is there a way to either: 1) Make a script to add my iPad as a linked keyboard/mouse as shown below 2) Connect my iPad as a linked keyboard/mouse through a physical connection while keeping it charged through a KVM switch? Here is my KVM switch: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B095DDPKN3

How can I automate reconnecting Universal Control if it ever disconnects? Is it possible to have a script run occasionally that just executes a hardcoded connect? Sometimes, rather frequently, UC will lose connection without a notable cause. It always reconnects right away from Displays, and works fine for a while, then like once every 10-20-30m seems to be disconnected. I've seen a variety of issues and troubleshooting around UC, and I think the best solution here would be an auto-reconnect, because the connecting and subsequent connection is pretty flawless otherwise. FYI using latest Sonoma and iPadOS, with a MBP (2019), and IPP (2024). The mac is hardwired and on WiFi as well, and the iPad is just on WiFi (1yo FIOS router), and everything is on the same Apple account, bluetooth on. Again, I don't think I need to troubleshoot UC here so much as I could use an auto-reconnect, so I don't have to browse through Settings > Displays... each time.

I want to be able to move the cursor to my other computer using a hot key when using Universal Control. So I devised a hack for tricking Universal Control into giving the other computer mouse control. The hack relies on an accessibility setting which allows you to control the pointer with the keyboard. The hack uses a python script triggered with a hotkey. The script runs on computer #1 and moves the pointer to the second machine. Script #1 then triggers a second python script on computer #2 which takes over move the mouse to the middle of the screen and clicks. Here's some more details of the operation: 1) The script on computer #1 moves the pointer to the very bottom of the monitor. The monitor for computer #1 sits physically above computer #2. 2) The script then hits numpad 2 twice. This moves the cursor down. 3) Now the pointer shows up on the top of computer #2's monitor. 4) Computer #1 then sends a command to computer #2 over ssh to run a python script that move the mouse around and click to wherever. 5) After all this, I can move the pointer around on computer #2 as if I had moved it there manually. Great! In case you are interested, here's the script for Computer #1:

from pynput.keyboard import Key, Controller, KeyCode
import time, pyautogui

pyautogui.moveTo(-463, 1439.99)

keyboard = Controller()
times = 3 # Number of times to press the key
delay = 0.02  # Delay between key presses in seconds

for _ in range(times):
    keyboard.press('2')
    keyboard.release('2')

    time.sleep(delay)  # Wait for a bit before next press

And for Computer #2:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
from pynput.keyboard import Key, Controller, KeyCode
import pyautogui
from Quartz.CoreGraphics import CGEventCreateMouseEvent, kCGEventMouseMoved, kCGEventLeftMouseDown, kCGEventLeftMouseUp, kCGEventSourceStateHIDSystemState, kCGMouseButtonLeft, CGEventPost, kCGHIDEventTap


screen_width, screen_height = pyautogui.size()

# Calculate the center coordinates
center_x = screen_width // 2
center_y = screen_height // 2

# print the center coordinates
print(center_x, center_y)

# find the center of the screen and move to it
pyautogui.moveTo(center_x, center_y)
my_move = 400
pyautogui.moveTo(center_x, center_y + my_move)

def simulate_trackpad_click(x, y):
    # Move the cursor to the desired position
    event_move = CGEventCreateMouseEvent(None, kCGEventMouseMoved, (x, y), kCGMouseButtonLeft)
    CGEventPost(kCGEventSourceStateHIDSystemState, event_move)

    # Simulate left mouse button down
    event_down = CGEventCreateMouseEvent(None, kCGEventLeftMouseDown, (x, y), kCGMouseButtonLeft)
    CGEventPost(kCGEventSourceStateHIDSystemState, event_down)

    # Simulate left mouse button up
    event_up = CGEventCreateMouseEvent(None, kCGEventLeftMouseUp, (x, y), kCGMouseButtonLeft)
    CGEventPost(kCGEventSourceStateHIDSystemState, event_up)

# Usage
simulate_trackpad_click(center_x - 200, center_y + my_move)
simulate_trackpad_click(center_x - 200, center_y + my_move)

Everything works pretty well. However, the keyboard still directs input to Computer #1, even after clicking on Computer #2 with the script above. I was hoping using a lower level script with Quartz (in script #2) would make a different but it didn't. As a result. I still have to manually click the trackpad to redirect keystrokes to computer #2. Does anyone know of anyway I might trick Universal Control into sending keystrokes to Computer #2 immediately without having to click on the trackpad myself?

What settings, debugging steps, and troubleshooting workarounds should I apply in setting up my home network for continuity/handoff features?

**Setup** I've got an iMac on Ventura 13.5 with a connected Magic Mouse and a Magic Keyboard. I am sharing the Magic Mouse and the keyboard with another Mac (Ventura 13.5). The two devices are a foot apart, they both are connected to the same Wi-Fi, and both are signed in with the same Apple ID. The *Mac* has a second monitor connected to it via HDMI. ![Screenshot of the Display settings arranged in the following order: iMac MacBook, and Dell monitor ][1] **Problem** With increasing frequency, the iMac has started to randomly disconnects from the MacBook. Then, one will only see the image on the Display settings. This is rather annoying as I use the mouse and the keyboard to work on the MacBook. Edit : To add more clarity, the issue as far as I understand is that the Mac display gets disconnected. That is, I can only see the iMac under the displays in the attached image. As a consequence of this disconnection, the universal control fails too. **Attempted troubleshooting** 1. Updated both the iMac and the MacBook to Ventura 13.5 2. Switched off and switched on both the keyboard and the mouse. 3. I noted previously when I am in a Zoom meeting on the iMac, the MacBook gets disconnected from it. But I do not have Zoom open anymore.

- The iPad's auto-lock settings are set to 5 minutes. - Running iOS 16.5. For some reason the iPad does not auto-lock after 5 minutes of inactivity. Reboots did not help. (I thought it was a localized iPad issue, but I missed to oversee the combined system. I thought I would add it as a question here because there is a lot out there that overlaps with issues from the iPad's past.)

Every update Universal Control stops working. There is another thread here: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/441283/universal-control-stopped-working-12-4 Trying the usual steps: 1. Creating another admin user on mac 2. Booting in safe mode 3. Turning of share cursor and keyboard on the ipad / reboot / turn back on 4. Factory resetting the Macbook Pro 13" M1, iPad Air4 and iPad Mini 6 - it fixes it for a few hours and then it breaks again. Nothing works. I called Apple and they said you need to re-install the OS again (I just re-installed a week ago!!). It seems every OS update universal control stops working. Is there any solution to this other than to format and reinstall? EDIT: I managed to get 1 iPad Air4 to connect and captured these logs: https://gist.github.com/rgaufman/7ff744d6d4b412544ecb4da660c4f7d9 When I switch on the iPad Mini 5, the Air4 disconnects immediately and then struggles to reconnect. This is what I see in the logs: https://gist.github.com/rgaufman/b13890f8277266ac7636a2ceb9a7cea2 UPDATE: I had 4 separate people from Apple promise to take ownership of this ticket and scheduled calls that they did not turn up to. It has been a horribly disappointing experience. I purchased a Mac Mini M1 16GB, did a fresh install and Handoff was working on it all day (got it today). I then thought ah, I will try to re-install Mac (4th time) on the Macbook Pro, this immediately killed handoff on the Mac Mini but now works on the Macbook Pro (I am guessing very temporarily!). Still looking for a solution for this :(

Universal Control has always been extremely glitchy for me, sometimes it works great a week, other times it flat out refuses to show up at all. I recently managed to get it working by factory resetting the MacBook and re-installing 12.4 but it broke again when updating to 12.5. I tried to factory reset the MacBook and iPad (again), this worked temporarily for a few hours and stopped working again. I have spent about 15 hours on the phone with Apple on 10+ calls and finally they agreed for a single person to take ownership of the case, but they will not pass it to engineers yet (argh!). Their suggestion has always been to re-install the OS so far (which I have done twice this week!) after the same common troubleshooting steps: * Turn it off and back on, create a new user, safe mode, disable screen time. * Signing out/back in of Apple ID on all devices, ensure no VPNs, security software, etc, etc, etc - all of which I followed countless times at this point My setup is: * MacBook Pro 13" M1 2020 - v12.5 * iPad Air 4 - v15.6 * I also have an iPad Mini 6 (v15.6) but I am keeping it switched off to isolate the issue. * Tried on multiple wifi networks, as well as a Virgin Media Hub (latest with wifi6) isolated to just my MacBook and iPad (I'm usually using a Ubiquiti Wifi6 LR AP, testing 1m away from the dish). After many many hours of experimenting, I found a consistent reproducible case and captured some logs. These are the steps to reproduce: 1. Turn off "Cursor and Keyboard" on iPad 2. Kill UniversalControl process on the Mac and delete the settings by running: cd ~/Library; killall -9 UniversalControl; rm ./Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.universalcontrol* ./SyncedPreferences/com.apple.kvs/ChangeTokens/EndToEndEncryption/UniversalControl/com.apple.universalcontrol; killall -9 UniversalControl 3. Toggle universal control off and back on on Mac 4. Turn on "Cursor and Keyboard" on iPad and reboot the iPad This will make Universal Control work. However, putting the iPad to sleep and then waking it causes Universal Control to disconnect permanently. It will not show up again until the above steps are followed again. I recorded a video of this here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fNYcsd_2h0 I also recoded a longer video of the entire setup: https://youtu.be/qZ4VbEe8nHM I also captured the iPad logs in Console.app: 1. Successfully connecting the iPad: https://gist.github.com/rgaufman/294b21fcf9b7f86bd3452b6ccdff4a3d 2. Putting iPad to sleep and waking it (causes a permanent disconnect): https://gist.github.com/rgaufman/4edd52af92ca8be2af5f2af58b1cce6c I also captured logs on the Mac on the isolated network: 1. Successfully connecting iPad Air4: https://gist.github.com/rgaufman/7ff744d6d4b412544ecb4da660c4f7d9 2. Air4 Disconnecting immediately when I switch on the iPad Mini 6: https://gist.github.com/rgaufman/b13890f8277266ac7636a2ceb9a7cea2 There is a different but related issue here with more details: https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/444208/universal-control-stopped-working-12-5

I've started using Universal Control to be able to switch between devices with just one mouse (MX Master 3) and without toggling on the mouse. This works fine as soon as I move the mouse pointer to the edge, it appears on the other computer. But if I work something with Safari (e.g. write this text) and then move the mouse again, the pointer is always on the other computer. So it's all unusable. Am I missing a setting?

Universal Control can "Link keyboard and mouse" to an iPad, which just controls the iPad with the keyboard and mouse that are already assigned to your Apple computer. This is different than "Mirror or extend to", which merely uses the iPad as a another dumb display. However, Universal Control often disconnects from the iPad when the computer or iPad go to sleep, and it seems to be random. **How can Universal Control keep the mouse and keyboard linked to the iPad persistently?** # Universal Control in System Settings System Settings > Displays > Link keyboard and mouse to

I used to connect both through Wifi, and it worked like a charm, but the Wifi was unstable on the Mac Mini. Now I connected the Mac Mini through ethernet but cannot combine both through Universal Control. Is there a way to achieve this?

So I set up 2 MacBooks and Universal control works fine. But time passes, I turn on computers with the same setting and everything, but **Universal Control doesn't work till I restart both of them.** What could be a problem? I do not change any settings. MacOS Ventura 13.2.1 on both MacBook Pro 13", 2020 and MacBook Air M2, 2020

In Universal Control, in order to start writing on my iPad, I have to switch focus by selecting something with the mouse, then the keyboard keystrokes will be sent to the iPad. In order to switch back, I have to reach for the mouse again. Is there any way to switch focus back and forth with the keyboard alone? An option that includes the apps running on my iPad in the Cmd + Tab app selector would also work great, maybe a custom app switcher does that?

I've been trying to find a way to programatically detect and script Universal Control. (Some background: imagine you have two Macs—call them A and B—both hooked up to external displays over USB-C to DisplayPort/HDMI adapters—let's call them X and Y. Most of the time, A is connected to X and B is connected to Y, as X is a bigger monitor on the left and Y is a smaller monitor on the right. But occasionally, one will want to switch these so B is connected to X and A is connected to Y. In this situation, it'd be good if X is always to the left of Y, but to do this, one must manually rearrange the monitors in System Settings.) I've tried [displayplacer](https://github.com/jakehilborn/displayplacer) , calling Application("Image Events").displays() (in JavaScript-flavoured osascript), and hs.screen functions in Hammerspoon. I've also delved through a whole bunch of Apple Developer Documentation, and tried calling some of the CoreGraphics Display-related functions (specifically the ones to get displays) described in [Quartz Display Services](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coregraphics/quartz_display_services) (through a Rust wrapper), but I'm reasonably sure Universal Control monitors are not treated _as monitors_ by macOS and after a pretty diligent search, I can't find any reference to any way to get the status of Universal Control or programatically rearrange UC virtual displays. If there isn't any way to script Universal Control using either AppleScript, underlying system libraries (etc.), the only real alternative looks like doing some really nasty UI automation, which is probably likely to be so fragile and unpleasant as to make it not worth bothering with.

I’m using a 14” M1 MacBook Pro and an Intel Mac mini, both running macOS 12.6, with Universal Control enabled so that I can share an external Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse between both Macs. The keyboard and mouse are connected via Bluetooth to the MacBook Pro and then “linked” to the Mac mini, which is connected to an external display. Every so often, the MacBook Pro seems to “forget” that the Mac mini is there: the keyboard and mouse abruptly stop working with it, and System Preferences > Displays will only show the settings for the MacBook Pro’s display. This will happen even if I’m actively using the mouse and keyboard with the Mac mini! Then, after waiting 20-30 seconds, it’ll suddenly reappear and everything will start working again, until some point later when the same cycle repeats. All of the troubleshooting steps I can find mention things like ensuring both Macs are on the same wifi network, signed into the same iCloud account, etc. But I know I have everything set up correctly and meet all the requirements for Universal Control because *it does work* most of the time. It’s not that I can’t get it to work at all; it’s that it periodically stops working for no apparent reason. Is it just flaky and I’m out of luck?

I've been having issues with universal control being intermittent between a Macbook Pro and 2 iPads. I thought maybe there is an issue with one of my devices, so I purchased a Mac Mini M1 16GB. This worked beautifully so I thought maybe I will try re-installing Mac on my MacBook Pro 13" M1. As soon as I did this, Universal Control is now working on the laptop (it wasn't before), but now it won't work on the Mac Mini M1. Any ideas what could be causing this or how to fix? I've tried speaking to Apple, 4 separate people told me they will take ownership of this ticket and help resolve it, scheduled follow up calls 3-4 days later and just never turned up, incredibly frustrating!

I may be misunderstanding how Universal Control works/what it's meant to do, so hopefully this isn't a dumb question - but I think that I should be able to use my keyboard and mouse to control two MacBook Pro's that are sitting side-by-side (provided the requirements are met). - I have two MacBook Pro's - 2021 w/ M1 chip, both running macOS Monterey with no pending updates (ie, both are up to date). - Both machines are connected to the same 5Ghz Wi-Fi network, both have Bluetooth enabled and are sitting an inch apart on my desk. - Both machines are logged into the same iCloud account. - Both machines have universal control enabled under Display settings - Both machines have Hand off to iCloud enabled: - The firewall is disabled for both the machines. I think basic universal control connectivity is established - Universal control for sharing of clipboard contents works fine - I can copy/paste between the two machines. Universal Control for sharing a display works - I can see the other MacBook under Add Display and when I connect to it, I can extend my desktop from one machine on to the other (which is _not_ what I'm trying to achieve - this is basically using the second MacBook as monitor where as I want to use it as a separate machine but be able to use a single keyboard/mouse setup for both) What I'm expecting to be able to happen, is to push the mouse thru the edge of one screen and have it show up/control the other macbook - ie, be able to control the keyboard/mouse on the secondary machine from my primary machine. Should I be able to do this or am I misunderstanding what Universal Control does? Is there anything else I can try (other than rebooting the machines repeatedly and logging in/out of the same iCloud account which I have already tried on both machines).

I upgraded to 12.4, I _had_ been using Universal Control between two MacBook Pros (Intel ones that are still new enough to support Universal Control) and it had been working great. But **after upgrading to 12.4 Universal Control is not working any more**. I read a bit about how to try to fix this in other forums. It seems like the thing to do is to turn it off (uncheck the 3 boxes in the Display Preferences) restart the computer(s) and then turn Universal Control back on again. That changed the checkboxes but didn’t allow the mouse pointer to cross systems. There's also another strange symptom. On one of the laptops the third check box (the one about automatically reconnecting) won't check. I can't click on it at all. It does not look "disabled" (greyed out) but it won't check. I suspect that laptop is the one with the "issue" and the other one is probably working fine (it takes 2 to tango though). One more odd thing. Both Macs have external monitors hooked up. On the Mac that was acting strange I unplugged it from it's Thunderbolt hub (how it is connected to the monitors) and now I _could_ check the third box. Universal Control still didn't work though. Oh yeah, for what it's worth I tried turning Universal Control off on both Macs (and restarting both of them) too. I say that because most of the stuff you read about "Universal Control" is about connecting a Mac to an iPad. But clearly it's supposed to support 2 Macs. Since this is a new feature on a new release are people finding a need to take cleanup steps or have solved this yet?

Currently I don't see a quick way to flip between using an iPad as an additional display or in using Universal Control (controlling it with macOS keyboard and mouse) with the current tooling of macOS 12.5. Has anyone found a quick way to switch between these aside from using the "System Preferences → Displays → Add Display" button?

On Universal Control settings on my Mac, the option named “Automatically reconnect to any nearby Mac or iPad” cannot be turned on. Even if I click the checkbox, it's immediately turned off again. What's wrong with my Mac? See also: .