Universal control not working iPadOS 16.4/ Ventura 13.3

To activate universal control you need to go to: ‘Settings’ on your Mac > ‘Displays’ > click on the ‘+’ icon and select ‘Link keyboard and mouse to ‘name of your iPad’’.

The ‘Link keyboard and mouse to ‘name of your iPad’’ option was missing on my Mac, so that prevented me from activating universal control.

Solution: sign out from your iCloud account on both your Mac and the iPad. After that, sign in again on both devices and voila: the ‘Link keyboard and mouse to ‘name of your iPad’’ option appeared.

Hope this helps.

I had the same issue. I had an vpn installed on my iPad. I toggled it off but still was not getting the universal to work, I removed it completely, then reset the network settings on the iPad. I also did safe boot on the Mac. So while in safe boot on the Mac and after a network reset, and signing Wi-Fi back in, universal started to work again in about 5 minutes. Don’t know if it was the network reset, vpn removal or safe boot or all of the above but it works now.

"All of these means just one thing: Universal Control is buggy and dead. It is not an issue of the network, or connectivity, or Bluetooth."

I can't agree more than this comment. I had placed high expectations on this features, every useful, and had been using it frequently until the latest three versions of Mac-ISO it started to fail almost 60%. Please put effort to fix it. Thanks!

@AmitSeal,

Agree ONE HUNDRED PERCENT. I have wasted far too many hours trying to get Universal Control to work and after having literally logged out of iCould on all of my devices and then logged back in, I was able to get it to work again - for less than a week. After a few days, I started getting random disconnects. As of today, I cannot connect at all and get a "device timed out" message re: my iPad.

Earlier in the day, I could get extended desktop to work (but not shared keyboard and mouse, my preferred setting). With this current failure, nothing works - not even extended desktop.

Whatever happened to "it just works"? It seems those days are far behind us.

Apple - if you are listening, this is hugely frustrating. I had come to rely on Universal Control and now it seems that I must make big changes to my workflow, given the loss of a working feature.

EDIT to include OS: MacOS Sonoma 14.3.1, iPadOS 17.3.1

(and as I write this, it started to work again... temporarily, no doubt. I fully expect another failure any minute now)

Please fix !!!

Helped only one time. Next day it stopped again. Together with continuity and Copy&Paste via Handoff which isn't working either

Continuity Handoff wasn't working between my iPhone and M2 Macbook Air. I turned it off on both devices, rebooted, and turned them back on. Now it works... YMMV!

Seems only the connections to the Mac are broken. Copy&Paste via Handoff between iPhone and iPad still works fine.

It was a very important feature to me. I used it all the time.

I hope they will fix it very quickly.

I had some small success, although after I removed my cursor from the iPad the issue started again.

So no final resolution.

New info:

Reboot it to Safe Mode, restart, and after that, it is working.

I do not know how long it will work.

Today it worked again. Mac was shut down yesterday and restarted today but iPhone and iPad had been on since.

So no idea why it sometimes works but other times doesn’t.

Unfortunately, it is not solving for indefinitely.

Still does not work.

Same with me. Devices are M2 iPad Pro 11" & M2 MacBook Pro 13".

I'm having the same problem. Also typing on iPhone to input text on Apple TV isn't working. And my Apple Watch is no longer unlocking my Mac. Handoff seems to be completely broken right now.