Disable Apple Pencil automatic drawing

Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. You should buy the product that does what you want it to do, not the product that you want that doesn’t operate the way you want. The Apple Pencil is a literal pencil, it was made for annotating documents and artists. It’s a pencil not a stylus. Stylus’s are made for navigation which is what you want. It’s not fair to complain about something you can avoid. It’s not even an alternative you can’t say that because they are two different products. One is for drawing and one is for navigation. Just because you can navigate with the Apple Pencil doesn’t mean that it was built for navigation.

You make it seem like a pencil and stylus are two inherently different products, that cannot be combined into one.

Well, a stylus is indeed meant for navigation, and cannot be used for precise drawing, becuase it is too cheap.

A pencil, on the other hand, is perfectly suitable for drawing AND navigation, as is shown by the new option present in the settings for Pages, Numbers and Keynote.

An option that remains absent is the option to also use the pencil for navigation in pdf files, e.g in pdf attachments that can be opened in Apple Mail. Combining the function of stylus and pencil is trivial. All that is needed is an additional setting in the ios software.

Graeme74 wrote:

It really is irrelevant. if you have the Pencil, of course you want to be able to use it for navigation and drawing.

Let Apple know how you feel. They are the only ones who can make changes.

Product Feedback - Apple

When using the note app, sketch feature always gets in the way. Try to highlight and it brings up a sketch screen. Isn’t there a way to disable this feature when trying to just compose and edit a note

I would love to see apple fix this as the automatic drawing function is a huge waste of time (imo). Fat greasy finger tips are frustrating compared to the pencil. My new ipad pro is fantastic to navigate with either fat finger nubs or the pencil, but why on earth have the pencil start drawing when I am picking an element on screen in keynote??? ios if forcing me to use my fat finger nubs instead, this then creates an extra step in what could have been a smooth workflow experience, it is a ridiculous complication in functionality. Just keep it simple and let us have all control over all of it with either a pencil or a finger! Better control with a finer tipped tool is an obvious bonus in the UI of analog or digital mediums. There's a reason professional painters use brushes and little kids use finger paints (tho I'm sure some zealot here will point out some beautifully finger painted works).

I used the Apple Pencil give or take 75% of the time for drawing. Why would I buy an additional stylus for an extra $50 or so, when certain apps should have a simple command to deactivate automatic drawing or just plain old not have automatic drawing assigned to the app. ... AND... why would anyone think that (For example) ‘NUMBERS‘ would possibly need automatic drawing.

Agree, but you would not have this issue using a regular, cheaper capacitive stylus simply for navigation.

So, it is NOT beside the point OR irrelevant to ask this.

why can it do both? For £99 it should and it did? Not now

I’ve sent feedback to Apple re this as well. Seems like a bit of an oversight in the full utility of a great tool. It was a frustrating day of hitting undo everytime I drew in a cell in Numbers.

For me, and on a strictly technical point of view, the new Apple Pencil automatic drawing is a drawback.

Cool. Thanks MichellePM

So what? He’s got the money.

I agree why should it default to drawing in a spreadsheet that makes no sense - I cound see in it pages - but even there I think you should be able to disable it.

And it would be helpful if you would read the entire post before weighing in with your “advice.”