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Universal Control breaks after latest OS updates and Apple hasn’t addressed it

Published Apr 5th, 2023 8:49AM EDT
macOS Monterey Universal Control
Image: Apple Inc.

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Last week, Apple released macOS 13.3 and iPadOS 16.4 to all users. Besides small upgrades, this last update broke the continuity features between iPad and Mac. Over the past years, Apple has bet on functions like Universal Control, Stage Manager, and Handoff to better integrate the systems and give users more options to work on these two platforms.

But just after these updates were out, users started complaining that they were breaking support for these continuity features. Here’s what one Reddit user wrote a week ago:

“I’m a huge fan of Universal Control, and I use it a ton on my M1 MacBook Pro and 5th gen iPad Air. I updated both devices to the latest OSes and can’t seem to get Universal Control working. I have tried disabling handoff on both devices and doing a reboot of both multiple times. Still no luck,” wrote user rmarchetti3.

This post has 47 comments at the moment the story is being written. Besides that, there are complaints on Apple Support Communities and Twitter. People say they’re having trouble between iPad and Mac, Mac and Mac, etc.

How to keep using continuity features between Mac and iPad?

As of now, the only way to avoid this issue is by not updating to iPadOS 16.4 and macOS 13.3. Users running previous updates seem to have this continuity features working just fine.

Since users are also having trouble with some Apple stock apps working poorly, it seems an x.x.1 update will launch rather sooner than later – which could, fortunately, fix the continuity issues.

Universal Control was one of the most-anticipated features arriving with iPadOS 15, and people were really eager to try it out. This feature lets you work on both iPad and Mac seamlessly by dragging and dropping files from one device to another, using the Mac keyboard on the iPad, and more.

BGR will let you know once Apple rolls out a new update to fix these continuity issues.

José Adorno Tech News Reporter

José is a Tech News Reporter at BGR. He has previously covered Apple and iPhone news for 9to5Mac, and was a producer and web editor for Latin America broadcaster TV Globo. He is based out of Brazil.