How To Customise The Look Of Your Cursor In iPadOS 13.4

Apple added external mouse support for the iPad when it rolled out iPadOS last year, but as of the iPadOS 13.4 update, users can now customise the look and behaviour of the iPad UI’s cursor. Using a mouse or trackpad to control your iPad might seem unnecessary given that it’s a touchscreen device, but it’s helpful if you’re using the iPad as a laptop replacement or as a secondary display for your Mac. It’s also a crucial accessibility option for users who have difficulty using the iPad’s default touch screen interface—and being able to modify the cursor makes it even more useful for those who may have trouble seeing it on screen.

The new cursor settings are available on the new iPad Pro and select iPads (fifth generation or newer), iPad minis (fourth generation and newer), and iPad Air models (second generation and newer), but you’ll need to install iPadOS 13.4 first. Go to Settings > General > Software Update to install the update if you haven’t already.

From there, connect your mouse or trackpad to your iPad via Bluetooth (if applicable), or plug the associated dongle directly into your iPad. Your cursor should appear immediately—no need to fiddle with accessibility settings, as you might have had to do in the past.

How to customise the iPad cursor

To customise the cursor, go to Settings > Accessibility > Pointer Control. From here, you can use the following menus to modify the look and feel of the cursor:

  • Scroll down to “Pointer Size” to make the cursor larger or smaller, and use the Colour menu to change what it looks like.

  • Visit “Scrolling Speed” to adjust how fast the cursor will move when you move/touch the mouse/trackpad, and change the “Zoom pan” behaviour.

And if you need to tweak your Trackpad—its tracking speed, for example, or whether you’d like to enable “tap to click” or two-finger secondary clicks—you’ll find these options directly in Settings > General > Trackpad.

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