Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro/Air trackpad scroll lag issue (FIX!)
Hi all, I am actually here to spread the knowledge of how to fix the trackpad scrolling lag issue for those who use the magic keyboard with the iPad Pro/Air 4 (I use the Air 4).
TLDR; disable Assistive Touch.
Long version: I noticed this issue from the first day i setup my ipad and keyboard (I've had this setup for 3 months now). I thought it was just a software bug and that updates would fix it, but that wasn't the case. When the trackpad would act up, the only way I could scroll would be to "flick" the trackpad and even then it was still wonky. I temporary fix for this would be to two-finger click on the trackpad then the scrolling would be fine. Another couple issues that I noticed were:
- Cursor animations were not there anymore (hovering over a button, how the cursor changes to a line when over a text field etc.)
- The "tap to click" function didn't work for toggle buttons in Settings
I brought it to a service center and they could not replicate the problem. The big difference was that they had restored to factory setting my iPad. So they gave it back to me to observe again - and lo and behold, it came back immediately after restoring my iPad using my backup. So obviously there was either a Setting or an app which was causing this problem. Of course if it was the latter, it would be time consuming to figure out which app it was, so I went with looking for the difference in Settings that I had with my current iPad vs a new one and which settings could be problematic. In past experience with an iPhone, I had some wonky experiences enabling some accessibility features (like how enabling the magnifier by holding down the button would make waking up the phone laggier) so checking Accessibility was my first step. And luckily for me, Assistive Touch was the first setting glaring right at me lol. So I disabled it and boom everything was fixed.
So that's pretty much it. I think that Assistive Touch has not been optimized for use with the Magic Keyboard (or an external keyboard/mouse setup, i did not test that but it'll most likely be the same behavior). I think Apple should fix this because the scroll lag issue (plus the others I mentioned above) was a HUGE nuance to my user experience - especially considering the fact that I use this setup as my main computing device.
I hope this helps everyone.
iPad Air, iPadOS 14