Using iPad Pro as primary display for an M4 Mac mini

[rogerogden]

Hi folks,

I apologize if this has been asked, but I didn't see anything obvious after a cursory search. I have an iPad Pro that I'd like to use as the primary monitor for my Mac mini via Sidecar. I have an Apple Studio Display that I plug my "primary" computer in to (either my work laptop during working hours, or my Mac mini in the evening), but I'd like if I could use my iPad Pro as a display for my Mac mini during working hours.

Is this possible? Thanks!

[waydabber]

I think it is possible but the problem obviously is how to let Sidecar start. If you have an other computer or shell access, you should be able to start things up that way. The app can connect/disconnect sidecar displays and the functionality is accessible using betterdisplaycli (maybe you also need to connect a virtual screen first as Sidecar might not work these days without at least one other display, not sure). So if you set all things up first properly and then have a means to start up the connection with some script or a way to trigger the script (an elegant solution would be to detect the presence of the iPad), then it could certainly be done.

But honestly I did not experiment with this at all, so I don't have a definite answer.

[mk3-14159]

https://github.com/coreylam/macmini2ipad

This might prove to be useful. It looks like what @waydabber mentioned. Although I personally have not tested it yet.

[PacketLauncher]

I actually raise another post about the very same thing (#4323), only with iPad Air 13" (M2) and Mac mini M2 Pro, as I thought that iPad Pro and Mac mini M4 may work differently (I'm new to Mac).

So the main problem I see here is mainly launching Sidecar on startup and to have it mirror with the virtual display... I suppose this can be done in a script which could also be assigned to a keyboard shortcut, though I'm not yet familiar with Apple scripts and somewhat worried to run non-app based scripts on my system... Then, perhaps it should be a feature request that Sidecar could be activated through BetterDisplay with a setting to either extend or mirror a selected display, along with an optional keyboard shortcut?

I also found that there's this built-in "Automatically reconnect to any nearby Mac or iPad" setting in Mac OS, which in theory, should automatically re-connect to previous displays that it was connected to. By default it is set to off. I've changed it to on and hoped that it will automatically connects to my iPad via Sidecar, but alas it didn't work.

While I do believe that auto connect to iPad via Sidecar will be possible in BetterDisplay or in Mac OS in general in the future, I need something that works for the time being, so I order a proper (portable) USB-C monitor to go with my M2 Pro Mac mini.