iOS Mouse Support Could Come This Year

Apple magic mouse

Federico Vittici and Steve Troughton-Smith are saying that iOS mouse support could be coming this year as an accessibility feature of iOS 13. Mr. Vittici mentioned it on the Connected podcast, while Mr. Smith confirmed the rumor via Twitter.


I personally don’t see the need for a mouse on a touch-oriented device. But I’m glad it will be optional, instead of a required component of iOS. Edit: 20190425: I take that back.  I didn’t think of the scenario where many people can hook up an external monitor to their iPad. In that case, mouse support is perfect.

Check It Out: iOS Mouse Support Could Come This Year

4 thoughts on “iOS Mouse Support Could Come This Year

  • It seems to me the iPad was Apple’s answer to the arising popularity of netbooks. iOS devices that followed came as demand evolved. But without mouse support I think the platform has remained crippled, and that is not something Apple has ever seemed to worry about, leaving their platform crippled…

    This is very good news for me. I can see myself using my iPad and phone much more for documents now. The other thing I wish was implemented would be a forward delete ability because I rarely ever need the backspace. Maybe its because I’m left handed, but I find myself always going to the front of the text that I want to delete when I’m working with a text document.

  • Interesting. Looks like Apple’s another step closer to turning ‘the future of computing’ into into a laptop. Hang on, don’t we already have those? 😉

  • I like that I could make an iPad the “Go to” device instead of getting my kids full blown computers. With a keyboard and mouse, some good productivity apps, and full blown multi-tasking they could turn their iPads into computing devices for when they need that functionality. Plus they could simply use them for all that they do right now as well.

    Win Win.

  • I used to agree. Mice for Macs and pointing for Pads. But then someone pointed out two things. You can drive an external display with an iPad but you still have to do all the manipulation in the iPad. Think gaming or content creation. It’s pretty much useless for anything but playing movies. The second thing was somebody pointed out that I was already using my ApplePencil as a mouse. Clicking on menus dragging things around. And then there was something Ive been grumbling about for a while now. Text editing is much easier with a mouse. Yes you can do it with finger input but a mouse is much better for selecting text and dragging it to a new place.

    So yeah, likely the moment its added, I’ll likely enable it and drag out my old MagicMouse.

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