Sidecar keeps freezing on iPad

Start freezing 34 hours after restarting iPad.

It doesn’t seem like the same problem as I hade before.

Now what’s still annoying is this bug in iPadOS.

https://youtu.be/t23wn5ml33M

Here we are in 2024. Using 2021 IPad Pro and Mac Air M2. Sidecar works for a few days and then….blah. Completely useless. Come on Apple!

I've been having issues with this since universal control as well, but I found a fix that I think might lead to a culprit.

When using the Ipad, have it hooked up to power. This for me has been the only way to keep the freezing from happening. Using a Powerbank works as well. everything began working beautifully again. Maybe this is a power management issue?

Thank you but I am not seeing this at all. My iPads are always hooked to power when this happens. I tried without power and it makes no difference. The only thing which fixes it is a reboot of the iPad and it is stable for about 20-24hrs.

I have the same problem, and every time it happens, by restarting the iPad it will not freeze for the next day or so, than it will start freezing again suddenly.

Besides every time the iPad auto-locked or the screen is turned off, in a few minutes the Mac will show „unable to connect-device time out“ message and if you tun on iPad screen again, it shows „lost connection“:(

Ooops. May have spoken too soon. The iPad screen is still freezing. Interestingly, when iPad frozen, pencil movements on the iPad are seen and active on the MBP. It seems that the iPad is not refreshing. Sure wish Apple could at least acknowledge this as an issue; the troubleshooting they push out is not helpful :-(. Maybe updated MacOS/iPadOS will help. We shall see.

I have this problem as well with an M1 MacBook Pro (2021) and iPad Pro, both updated (iPad not using 16 yet, but on 15.7). Moreover, if I use a USB cable things kind of work, but if I disconnect the cable and plug it back in (because my iPad stops charging for some reason), all Networking functionality in the MacBook dies and I have to do a hard reboot.

Needless to say Sidecar has become unusable, and it was working before... I'm not sure exactly when it stopped working, but it was definitely earlier this year, so it probably corresponds to when others noticed it started appearing.

I'm still having a sidecar issue as well. Using a M1 macbook air 2020 installed with 12.6 and Ipad pro with 15.7. Doesn't matter if I'm wireless or wired, at work or at home. I get about 20 good seconds out of it and it freezes. I've tried ALL the things previously listed to troubleshoot and the only fix for me is to disconnect and reconnect from my Mac. This is unreasonable with how frequent it occurs. Definitely hoping for a bug fix soon!

Now I find out if sidecar is kept active by preventing MacBook or iPad Display from turning off during the period of which it usually starts freezing, it lasts well over 35 hours without freezing, which otherwise would have started freezing already after 31 hours after restarting iPad.

After 42 hours I let the Mac sleep, after Mac woke from sleep, iPad showed “connecting” for a long time without really connect.

The disconnect and reconnect of sidecar triggered then the freezing.

Yep, totally rubbish. Such a shame because it has great potential and works really well, when it works. I extend my desktop to my iPad Pro (M1) from my MBP 14 inch and it works for a bit, sometimes a short amount of time other times longer, then freezes and is unusable, or seems to flip to universal control if anything. As mentioned elsewhere here, the iPad hasn't frozen, just the connection between the Mac and iPad I suppose. Does look like universal control is confusing things and I wonder if there was some way I could disable that maybe it'd work? Anyway, totally buggy software - who the heck tested this? - and Apple really shouldn't be promoting this stuff as a usable feature when it's so clearly not.

Still having this issue. Using Ipad pro with usb-c cable connected to Imac pro and never had this problem till recent updates. After I updated to 13.0.1 (on mac) 16.1.1 (ipad) it has become worse, stopping every 20-30 seconds.

This is a huge issue for me! It freezes after using my iPad as an external display for 10 seconds. I'm using mac OS 13.0.1 (2020 m1 macbook air), and ios 16.1.1 (2022 m2 iPad pro). I know it's not my wifi because I have the same issue on multiple different networks (home, office, friends houses etc.) Sure, I can plug my iPad into my computer with a cable, but that's annoying. Using this feature was one of the main reasons I bought the iPad. Please fix this bug ASAP. Lot's of frustrating bugs happening on my apple tech recently.

Thanks to this excellent suggestion from bob6507!

I was at my wits end, considering both my devices (Macbook and iPad Pro) fell well within the requirements, and the iPad Pro kept freezing, and I would have to connect and reconnect, which isn't practical and disappointing for the price of the Apple equipment.

Don't want to jinx myself, but I've been using for an hour, and before I switched off the Universal Control, it wasn't lasting three minutes. So again, thank you Bob for your post!!! 😊 👍🏼

I am having the same issue with SideCar - Universal Control, or whatever they are calling it today. I have an M1 iPad Pro running iPadOS 16.1.1 and a 2017 iMac Pro (Intel Xeon 18 core) running macOS 13.0.1.

Both devices are signed in with the same apple id, both have 2-factor authentication on. Both are on the same network. I have read countless threads on how to set it up correctly and ensure i did... It works for roughly 10-20 minutes and then it freezes, with Wifi enables on both devices. It also freezes over USB with wifi and bluetooth turned off on the iPad.

A reason why I recently moved from the Windows PC ecosystem to iMac, is because this was now possible and the form factor is modular and minimal. I am so frustrated with this that I am beginning to regret making that decision.