Use Continuity to work across Apple devices

With Continuity, you can use your iPad together with your iPhone, Mac, and Apple Watch to work smarter and move seamlessly between your devices.

What is Continuity?

Continuity is the way that your Apple devices work together. There are many Continuity features that allow you to easily work across your Apple devices, without ever missing a beat. There’s no specific Continuity app—it’s built into the operating system and many apps you use every day. You just need to be signed in to the same Apple Account on your Apple devices. Many features also require that you have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth® turned on.

There are minimum system requirements for Continuity features; see the Apple Support article System requirements for Continuity features on Apple devices.

Share content between devices

You can easily share content between your devices, whether it’s copying text on an iPad and pasting it your Mac, sharing a file from your iPhone to your iPad, or handing off tasks between devices.

Quickly share photos, videos, contacts, and anything else, with anyone near you—wirelessly. AirDrop makes sharing to iPhone, iPad, and Mac as simple as dragging and dropping. See Use AirDrop on iPad to send items to nearby Apple devices.

Copy text, images, photos, and videos on one Apple device and then paste the content on another Apple device with Universal Clipboard. For example, you can copy a recipe from Safari on your iPad, then paste it into Notes on your nearby Mac. See Cut and paste between your iPad and other devices.

Start a document, an email, or a message on one device and pick up where you left off on another device. Handoff works with apps like Mail, Safari, Maps, Messages, Reminders, Calendar, Contacts, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. See Hand off tasks between iPad and your other devices.

Answer calls, send texts, and share your internet connection

Make it easy to stay connected when you set up your iPad to receive calls and text messages from your iPhone, or share its Personal Hotspot with other devices.

Relay calls from your iPhone to your iPad, as well as send and receive texts. You can also hand off a FaceTime call from one device to another, so if you start a call on your iPhone and want to continue it on a larger screen, it’s easy to transfer the call to your iPad. See Use iPhone to allow calls and text messages on your iPad.

If you have an iPad (Wi-Fi + Cellular), you can share internet using the Personal Hotspot on your iPad when you’re within range of your Mac (and other devices)—no setup is required. Your iPad automatically appears in the Wi‑Fi status menu—just select it to connect to the internet. See Share your internet connection from iPad (Wi-Fi + Cellular) with Personal Hotspot.

Stream content to a larger screen

Want to see it on the big screen? Share, play, or present videos, music, photos, and more from your iPad to your Mac. You can also stream content from iPad to your Mac, an Apple TV, or an AirPlay 2-enabled TV. See Stream video and audio from your iPad with AirPlay.

Use your iPad camera with your Mac

With the camera on your iPad, you can take a picture or scan a document and have it appear instantly on your Mac. (You can also use Markup tools on an image or draw a sketch on your iPad and have it appear on your Mac.) See Insert sketches, photos, and scans from your iPad on Mac.

You can also use your iPad camera when you make a FaceTime call on Apple TV. See Use FaceTime on Apple TV 4K (2nd generation or later).

Extend your workspace with iPad and Mac

When your Mac is near an iPad, Universal Control allows you to use a single keyboard and trackpad, or a connected mouse, to work across the devices. You can even drag content between them—for example, you can sketch a drawing with Apple Pencil on iPad, then drag it to your Mac to drop into a Keynote presentation. See Use a keyboard and mouse or trackpad to control Mac and iPad.

With Sidecar, your iPad becomes a second display for your Mac. You can either extend your Mac desktop, or show the same app on both screens but control different aspects of it. See Use iPad as a second display for your Mac.

Helpful?

iPad User Guide