Sidebar – on the Mac – Is a Surprisingly Helpful Utility for Video

You may have read recently about a new macOS feature called “Sidebar.” This allows a Mac to mirror an iPhone or iPad on the Mac desktop, meaning you can run an iPhone app, for example, on your computer.

If you are like me, you read this and yawned: “I’m a video editor, why do I need this?” And, except for making iPhone screen captures a lot easier,  there it rested.

Until, I realized that this mirroring works both ways – not with an iPhone, but an iPad!

The number of on-camera videos I do each week continues to expand. Online training for O’Reilly, webinars, Zoom interviews, social media promos – if left unchecked, I’d be forced to spend all my time talking to a camera.

However, my videos are not just ad hominem screeds extolling the virtues of wild flowers, I need to actually be informed and accurate in what I say. (I know, how old-fashioned….) Sadly, my poor brain has problems memorizing more than about three words of text.

The answer is a teleprompter. But most prompters are huge, expensive, and only display text. They don’t mirror the Mac’s screen. Did I mention huge? Huge. Yet, the space I have for a prompter is microscopic.

Enter Sidebar. By mirroring my Mac desktop to an iPad, then using that iPad as a teleprompter source, I could work with much lower-cost prompters.

NOTE: To test this, I bought an iPad-based prompter from Neewer. I’m installing it later this afternoon and I’ll review it next week.

In terms of distance, once I connected the iPad to my Mac – specifically an M2 Mac Studio feeding a 10th-generation iPad – I was able to get perfect Sidebar streaming 50 feet away from my computer via BlueTooth! Gracious!! Sidebar does not require immediate proximity. (Keep in mind that, like a wireless mic, your distance will vary based upon obstacles and interference.)

NOTE: While we can view an iPhone on a Mac screen, we cannot view the Mac screen on an iPhone; only an iPad.

TO MOVE A WINDOW

To start, place a compatible iPad  within a few feet of a Mac, with Bluetooth enabled on both devices. Or, connect the iPad to the Mac via a USB cable. Both units need to be logged into the same Apple ID.

To move a window to the iPad, hover over the green button in the top left corner (top red arrow) of the window you want to move and choose Move to … iPad (bottom red arrow).

Click to see larger image.

Almost instantly, that window appears on your iPad.

To turn off the mirroring, go up to the double-window icon in the top right of the menu bar (top right arrow) and click the blue mirroring icon (middle red arrow).

Click Display Settings (lower red arrow) to reveal more settings for this display.

There are a variety of display settings you can adjust, depending upon your needs. You can access them via the Sidebar menu, or Apple logo > Settings > Display (left red arrow).

Then, click the iPad icon (top red arrow) to see its specific settings. The easiest way to see what these do is change something.

LARRY’S THOUGHTS

I normally edit using two 27″ monitors directly attached to my Mac. So, most of the time, I don’t need a small third screen.

However, Sidebar is a great way to add a monitor to on-location editing with a laptop, as the video source for a teleprompter, streaming to an Apple TV, or wherever you need a small monitor in a different location.