Monitor webcam support touted for iPadOS 17 Stage Manager

The Stage Manager feature of iPadOS 17 will enable support for webcams on external monitors, a leaker claims, with support for multiple video and audio sources also allegedly planned for the update.

Stage Manager in iPadOS 16 offered power users many advantages over elements such as Split View for multitasking. In iPadOS 17, it is thought that Stage Manager will become even more useful for those who use external monitors attached to their iPad Pro.

In a Sunday tweet by leaker "@Analyst941," the iPadOS 17 Stage Manager will offer users the ability to use webcams built into external monitors for the first time. The feature will also have a setting that will keep the external display turned on and usable if the iPad display sleeps.

Continuing the quality-of-life improvements, the feature will gain audio output source settings, so users can select where they hear music and other sounds from, such as iPad speakers or those of the external monitor. It will also be possible to stream footage and sounds from multiple audio and video sources at once with Stage Manager enabled.

Power users will also benefit from a resizable dock option specifically for the external display.

While the rumor seems fairly plausible overall, there's no guarantee that the information from @Analyst941 is correct until Apple actually reveals iPadOS 17 at WWDC.

The accuracy of the leaker is also questionable, as on April 27, the leaker offered the dubious rumor that a special version of iPadOS is being developed for a larger iPad model.

However, given that Apple's introduction of a 12.9-inch iPad Pro following years of a well-established 9.7-inch iPad display had the company simply add a new supported resolution to the operating system, it seems more likely that it would do the same move again.

3 Comments

tht 23 Years · 5654 comments

About 1 year ago

Keep on iterating as they say. Multiple streams of audio is important for podcasters and such.

Apple still has quite strange approach with the iPad. Strangely unambitious.

CheeseFreeze 7 Years · 1340 comments

I think the iPad was better off with its single-tasking approach.
At least it was clear what it wanted to be.

Now it feels like a crippled laptop. Basically macOS with a walled garden App Store, no Terminal, inflexible Finder and other concessions.

This is why I think the cheapest iPads (with enough storage) are the best iPad products: they differentiate through pricing and product positioning.
You know it's about content consumption and light computing, and perfect for kids. One of the best products I bought (mostly because of my kids).

The iPad Pro leads to different expectations: laptop prices, Pro marketing, high-end specs, but no true day-to-day pro capabilities. Only artists with pencils will appriciate. It's the worst Apple product I purchased the last 5 years or so. Waste of money.

CheeseFreeze said:

I think the iPad was better off with its single-tasking approach. At least it was clear what it wanted to be.

Now it feels like a crippled laptop. Basically macOS with a walled garden App Store, no Terminal, inflexible Finder and other concessions.

This is why I think the cheapest iPads (with enough storage) are the best iPad products: they differentiate through pricing and product positioning.
You know it's about content consumption and light computing, and perfect for kids. One of the best products I bought (mostly because of my kids).

The iPad Pro leads to different expectations: laptop prices, Pro marketing, high-end specs, but no true day-to-day pro capabilities. Only artists with pencils will appriciate. It's the worst Apple product I purchased the last 5 years or so. Waste of money.

The UI scales with the input capability. It’s fine to have the iPad UI scale from simple to complex, letting users use it as they see fit.

If the iPad only had 8 to 10” displays, I think an enhanced iPhone UI would be mostly fine, with perhaps the addition of stylus compatibility. At these size touchscreen devices, it’s mostly one hand input, or 1 to 4 touch inputs. As you say, Apple has iPads ranging from 8 to 10 inches, and they are used like the original iPad: tap and swipe with mostly pecking on the keyboard.

Once the display sizes got to 11 to 13”, it’s become less mobile and more of desktop or laptop usage case. Users are able to put 8 to 10 fingers on it, including touch-typing on the software keyboard. In addition, Apple’s added both more input capability with mice+keyboard and more display through external display support. The UI should scale appropriately.

Apple has oddly kept the UI from scaling. It’s like they have a vision of the iPad as one thing: a tweener device in between the iPhone and Mac, and are unwilling to let it become a compute platform on its own. Their iPadOS UI team is also oddly immature with their UI ideas, or it’s a team no one wants to work on. Lots of mistakes.