Since late last year, I’ve been using Apple’s fantastic Sidecar feature that makes it a breeze to leverage my iPad Pro as a secondary display for my MacBook Pro. Overall, I’m having such a great experience that I’m using this setup and skipping an external display but there is one improvement that I’d really love to see come to Sidecar…
If you haven’t used Sidecar yet and have a compatible Mac and iPad, it’s really worth trying. My colleague Zac has a really useful guide on getting started and going further with turning your iPad into a second wireless (or wired) display for your Mac with Sidecar.
My only hang-up outside of a few small quirks is that only landscape orientation is supported right now for iPads with Sidecar. I’d really love to see portrait orientation support for an even better experience.
For my own use case, portrait for my Sidecar display would be useful to see more content as I’ll often have Slack or a second browser window open on my 11-inch iPad Pro when connected to my 15-inch MacBook Pro. The vertical real estate would be more helpful than opting for width.
I imagine there are lots of use cases from coders to musicians, creative professionals, and many others who would love to have a portrait Sidecar setup as well, whether its for mobile use when away from larger external monitors or maybe even for primary use.
One fun thing to think about is with an 11-inch iPad in portrait next to a 15-inch MacBook Pro, you effectively get a 21.5-inch diagonal display. Okay, you’re changing the aspect ratio by going wider but not increasing the vertical pixels but you get the idea, it’s a great canvas! 😄.
What do you think? Do you want to see Apple update Sidecar with portrait support? What use cases would you find it valuable?
If you’re into the idea, you can let Apple know by dropping some feedback here!
