Disable Apple Pencil automatic drawing

Is there a way to disable automatic drawing with the Apple Pencil.

I purchased the Pencil to use mostly as a navigation tool, so I do not always touch the wrong thing with my fat fingers. I find it very frustrating when iOS creates a new note whenever I want to clear a notification and don‘t think of using my finger instead of the Pencil. It is also extremely annoying that the just updated Numbers, Pages and Keynote apps now implemented automatic drawing without the possibility of turning that behaviour off. I use Numbers a lot, and navigating with the Pencil was great to use check boxes and place the cursor in the desired location within cells for editing. Now, it has become a useless tool within the apps that I use the most!!

I just realized today that automatic drawing can be disabled in the Notes app, why is this not available in the other apps? There should also be an option (in Accessibility?) that allows users to turn off automatic drawing and Notes creation! Users who want automatic drawing in apps could still be able to enable that behaviour in the individual apps’ settings.

Please fix this ASAP (or tell me where the settings can be changed to stop that very frustrating behaviour)!

iPad Pro Wi-Fi, iOS 11.2.6, Apple Pencil

Posted on Mar 27, 2018 4:17 PM

Top-ranking reply

Stacey_Undead

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Feb 1, 2019 12:45 AM

Way late to the party here, but for those who come here looking - like I did and didn't find the answer. Go into settings, scroll to the app you are using, in my case it was keynote, and then select 'Select and scroll with Apple Pencil' :)

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110 replies

Jul 3, 2018 9:09 PM in response to f1major

i had the same frustratio. Go to settings and find pages. Click on it and you have some options. the last option is allowing “select and scroll with Apple Pencil“. Since I selected this option i can use Apple Pencil without being prompted to draw first.

Smittyjo

Level 1

4 points

Jul 3, 2018 9:44 PM in response to The Palms 210

Glad you figured it out. The issue was fixed in Keynote, Pages and Numbers about two weeks ago. i rarely use Pages and never use Numbers, but I design digital planners in Keynote, so the Pencil issue was very problematic for me. I could not figure out why in subsequent upgrades they did not fix the pencil thing and finally decided the developers must have liked it that way and weren’t going to fix it. I can’t even imagine why they thought people would want to scribble on a spreadsheet like Numbers, but things are weird all over these days. But I discovered a love for Procreate when Keynote caused me so much frustration and now spend less time with Keynote, so I am sure competing developers do a happy dance whenever Apple app developers get too high on themselves.

wlvrneA2

Level 1

4 points

Aug 21, 2018 10:41 AM in response to f1major

Settings > Pages > "Select and Scroll with Apple Pencil"

Settings > Numbers > "Select and Scroll with Apple Pencil"

Settings > Keynote > "Select and Scroll with Apple Pencil"

Perhaps, we are not so unreasonable after all!

Dec 10, 2018 11:01 PM in response to jchalfant.com

There’s a way to disable it. Go to your settings app and follow the Numbers, Pages, or Keynote sections.

Dec 10, 2018 11:02 PM in response to jchalfant.com

There’s a way to disable it. Go to your settings app and follow the Numbers, Pages, or Keynote sections.

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Disable Apple Pencil automatic drawing