The setup worked a lot better than expected but configuring the mouse to make it work well took some time. If you’re in the same boat, here’s everything you need to do to pair a mouse with your iPad, and how to customize the settings to make it more usable.
How to Pair a Mouse With an iPad
Let’s quickly get the basics sorted. The first thing you need to do is put your mouse in pairing mode. The way to do this varies by device but you generally need to press and hold a pairing button on your Bluetooth mouse.
Now on your iPad, go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch > AssistiveTouch. Scroll down, tap Devices, and select Bluetooth Devices here. Tap the name of your mouse to pair it with your iPad.
This is when you’ll be able to see a mouse pointer and move it around the screen, but if you’re expecting a desktop-like experience, you’ll be disappointed. You need to tweak a few more settings to get your iPad’s mouse experience up to speed.
Let’s get started right away.
1. Disable Natural Scrolling
Using the scroll wheel of the mouse on an iPad can be frustrating because it appears to be inverted. When you scroll down with the mouse, stuff on the screen scrolls up, and vice-versa.
We prefer to have onscreen elements move the same way that the mouse wheel does, and that’s why this is the first setting we always change when pairing a mouse with a new iPad.
You can do it by going to Settings > General > Trackpad & Mouse. Here you should disable Natural Scrolling.
2. Change the Color and Size of the Mouse Pointer
By default, the iPad’s mouse pointer is gray, which is a big problem when you’re using your iPad in dark mode. We could barely spot the mouse pointer thanks to this camouflage and we just had to change its color immediately.
To change the pointer color, go to Settings > Accessibility > Pointer Control. Here you want to tap Color first and change the mouse pointer color to anything you like.
When you’ve done that, go back to the previous page and enable Increase Contrast to make sure the pointer stands out. Finally, use the slider under Pointer Size to increase or decrease the size of the mouse pointer for optimum visibility.
3. Change the Scrolling Speed
This one is also something you need to fix immediately when you start using a mouse with your iPad. The default scrolling speed appears to make the mouse zip around faster than Usain Bolt, which is great if your mouse pointer is heading to the Olympics, but not so much if you’re trying to click that tiny little x button on top of an ad.
Luckily, we can easily fix this. Just head on over to Settings > Accessibility > Pointer Control and use the slider under Scrolling Speed. We moved it to the slowest possible speed (near the tortoise icon) to keep it at a usable level.
4. Reduce Your Reliance on the Touchscreen or iPad Buttons
When we have our iPad connected to a keyboard and mouse, we really hate having to use the touchscreen or iPad buttons for things like opening the Control Center or taking a screenshot. If this annoys you too, then you should set up the AssistiveTouch button and configure it.
AssistiveTouch puts a clickable button on your iPad’s screen and allows you to execute physical actions and gestures without touching the iPad.
Go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch > AssistiveTouch and enable AssistiveTouch.
Once you’ve done that, tap Customize Top Level Menu and select how many icons you want to see when you hit the AssistiveTouch button. You can have one to eight icons here, and tapping each icon allows you to assign an action to it. For instance, the Shake to Undo action can be assigned to one icon.
You need to do one last thing to complete the AssistiveTouch setup. Right below Customize Top Level Menu you will see a sub-head labeled Custom Actions. Here you can configure what happens when you click the AssistiveTouch button.
Under Single Tap make sure that the Open Menu action is selected. This will ensure that all the shortcuts you configured will appear when you click the AssistiveTouch button once.
Under Double Tap and Long Press, feel free to select commonly used actions such as Home, App Switcher, or Screenshot. The next time you want to quickly execute these actions, you just need to double-click or click-and-hold the AssistiveTouch button.
5. Configure Extra Mouse Buttons
If your mouse has a couple of extra buttons on the side, you can actually make them do some really useful things including running Siri Shortcuts. This is perhaps our favorite feature, and here’s how you can use it too.
Go to Settings > Accessibility > Touch > AssistiveTouch. Now you should tap Devices and then hit Bluetooth Devices. Under Connected Devices tap the name of your mouse. Here, tap Customize Additional Buttons and then click any extra button on your mouse.
This button will now appear on screen as Button X where X is any number that iPadOS assigns. Tap that and then you can add any feature that you need, such as Pinch and Rotate, Hold and Drag, Screenshots, Volume Down or Up, or even your favorite Siri Shortcuts.
Make Your Mouse Feel at Home on iPad
With these settings, your mouse will feel like it should’ve shipped with the iPad. However, it does take a while to get used to all the amazing mouse shortcuts you just configured. But once you do, there’s no going back to the old touchscreen.
Now that you’re on this path, you might want to check out a few ways to make your iPad feel more like a MacBook. As big fans of the Mac, we have to be honest here and confess that the iPad just can’t be a like-for-like Mac replacement, but if you pair it with a mouse or trackpad, it can come very close to being one.
