Sidecar Doesn't Recognize 3rd Gen iPad Pro Wired or Wirelessly

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Sidecar Doesn't Recognize 3rd Gen iPad Pro Wired or Wirelessly

Updated to Catalina yesterday after having iPadOS for about two weeks. The laptop is MacBook Pro Late 2018.

Immediately after upgrading, I turned on Bluetooth and managed to Sidecar wirelessly for about 10 seconds. Once I tried turning the Sidebar off in the Sidecar settings, the iPad screen went purple for a second, and that was the last time I was able to use Sidecar successfully.

What I tried so far is:

Connect it via USB. I managed to have it recognized in Sidecar, but ended up with a "Miscellaneous error occurred (32002)" error message, followed by a dark screen on the iPad.
Sign out with my AppleID on both the Mac and iPad, restarted, and signed back in. Didn't do jack. In fact, at this point Sidecar wouldn't recognize iPad either wired or wirelessly, even when paired via Bluetooth.

I watched the video below and followed the instructions, naturally. A hunch tells me it's a caching issue with the app either on the Mac or the iPad (or both), but I couldn't find any clues on how to "reset" the app.

Help is much appreciated as I used iPad daily as a second monitor (via Duet, which has horrible compatibility and performance).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MKy0zz_7gY

MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

Posted on Oct 8, 2019 3:26 AM

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Answer 1

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DeeKay19 Author

Level 1

15 points

Oct 9, 2019 1:49 PM in response to DeeKay19

No time for support I’m afraid (or a ‘genius’ to cover Apple for screwing up).

I was eventually able to make Sidecar work wirelessly through the following set of actions, though wired connectivity still doesn’t work (I either get an error, or Sidecar on the iPad freezes when "switching to USB").

This is the less aggressive option:

On the iPad, go to Settings > General > Reset and hit ‘Reset Location & Privacy’.
Turn Bluetooth and WiFi off on both devices, plug the iPad to the Mac and authorize sync (i.e., your Mac sees the iPad).
Disconnect the iPad, restart both devices, turn WiFi and Bluetooth on both, then your Mac should be able to Sidecar seamlessly.

If that doesn’t work, do the same, but beforehand perform the following:

Sign your Apple ID out on both devices and turn them off.
Turn your Mac on, sign in, wait a few minutes for it to sync (can be deducted from CPU usage), then restart the Mac.
Do the same for iPad.

I’ll try Sidecaring my iPad to a few other Macs at work via USB tomorrow and will update on any progress.

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