Using my Mac on my iPad with Luna Display

I recently wrote about what my iPad is missing to allow me to use it as a near-full time computer for my work. Luna display is something that is helping me bridge the gap.

Luna display is a tiny dongle (in USB-C or mini display port flavours) that plugs into your Mac and convinces the OS it’s a monitor. Software then beams the screen from the Mac to the iPad over your local network. By launching the Luna Display app on the iPad you essentially have a MacOS app running in iOS. The pencil works as a cursor, touch input works as does the keyboard. The system iOS keyboard shortcuts override as you’re still in iOS, but you can work around that. You can also use Luna Display the other way around as a wireless external display for your Mac, but this is not a use case I currently need.

I learned most if the tricks to getting this working well from Federico Viticci’s fantastic article on Mac Stories, and made a few changes that suit my workflow better.

The bumps you’ll encounter are;

Waking the Mac from sleep #

When you’re not next to your Mac you need to be able to wake it remotely for Luna to work. Federico created this excellent shortcut that sends a command over SSH and types in your Mac’s user password. You have to turn on remote login on the Mac under ‘Sharing’ to enable this, but it works every time for me. I keep this in my shortcuts widget for easy access. Also keep the Luna app running locally on the Mac or you’ll have to visit the Mac to make this work.

Mirroring screens between Mac and iPad #

When opening Luna the Mac treats the iPad like any other external display; by default it will use that screen to create a second, empty screen onto which you place apps and windows. Moving stuff onto that second screen is tricky when the primary screen is not physically with you.

Federico’s approach was to construct a series of keyboard shortcuts using BetterTouchTool to move windows from one side to the other.

I prefer to simply mirror the displays. I tried many ways to achieve this using custom scripts launched by keyboard shortcuts and third party utilities. In the end I settled on the simplest solution; an off-screen swipe from the left side inside the Luna app on the iPad reveals a monitor control panel.

luna-display-ipad-screen-mirror-steps.jpg

There’s a link there to open Mac display preferences. I tap that, click ‘Gather windows’, then ‘Mirror displays’ and set the resolution to be optimised for the iPad display. Done. Sometimes Mac OS remembers this state, but once the connection is lost, is seems to reset to defaults each time. This method seems to achieve what I want in the least time/number of actions.

Sketch-on-ipad-using-Luna-Display.png Happily using Sketch on the iPad

Mouse control #

Tapping the screen is a left click, and you’ll need to ctrl-tap for right click. Its best to use the pencil over your finger due to the size of hit targets on MacOS - another reason why it’s useful to mirror the screen and optimise for iPad as it makes everything larger and the correct aspect ratio. You can of course use any wireless pointing device for your Mac still if you’re still in Bluetooth range, but I’m usually not.

two-finger-scroll-using-Luna-display.png Two finger scroll. You can also pinch/punch to zoom in/out.

Keyboard shortcuts #

The only one I bothered to remap was Spotlight. Cmd-Space is the same shortcut on both MacOS and iOS, so on the iPad you’ll be search iOS rather than the connected Mac. So on the Mac I switch the shortcut to be Alt-Space instead. I just avoid app switching via Cmd-Tab inside Luna as you’ll be switching out of Luna and into other iOS apps on the iPad. Instead I use a Cmd-1 shortcut to access Exposé and tap the desired application, or tap the active dock icon.


That’s it really. I don’t have much more to add beyond what Federico has laid out. These small changes to his workflow seemed to work better for my use case. Overall I’m super happy with the outcome, and can now access my Mac remotely using an iPad from anywhere at home.

 
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