Stream Deck will be compatible with iPad very soon

Elgato's hugely popular Stream Deck range of accessories for the Mac is coming to the iPad, as the company calls on app developers to take part in testing.

There may have once been a single Stream Deck, and it may have been for Mac users who stream video, but those days are long gone. Now there is a whole family of Stream Deck devices, and they are exceptional tools for all Mac users — and, soon, iPad ones.

Stream Deck provides users with a set of hardware buttons — ranging from three on a Stream Deck pedal to 32 on the Stream Deck XL. In every case bar the pedal, each button is actually a screen so as well as being able to program each one to do different things, users can add different icons or image to all of them.

"For years, Stream Deck has been beloved by desktop users for its versatility and ease of use," said the company in a video. "That's why we're excited to bring the power of Stream Deck to iPad for the very first time by introducing Stream Deck Kit and opening a world of possibilities for new users."

It's significant that the announcement is of Stream Deck Kit, rather than a Stream Deck per se. This is an open-source SDK that Elgato is working on for developers "to seamlessly integrate Stream Deck support into their own apps."

So, initially, there is no public app. This announcement is of an alpha release and a call to developers to join the project. Ultimately, though, what will happen is that Elgato's Stream Decks will plug into the USB-C port of M1 iPads or later, and effectively act as they do on a Mac.

On a Mac, the Elgato Stream Deck app runs in the background, but the way that iPadOS works means that this can't be done. Elgato is instead planning for iPad apps to include control of the Stream Deck.

So as you switch from one app to another, responsibility for and control of the Stream Deck device moves with you. That immediately means that Stream Deck for iPad will have the same ability to have all its buttons and functions change to suit the app you're currently using.

It's not clear yet, though, what will happen on the Stream Deck when the user is not in any apps. Nor what will happen if they are in an app, but that app doesn't support the new Stream Deck Kit API.

Elgator says that it will make announcements about the public release later in 2024. For now, it has published developer documentation and also released an early test version of its iPad controller Stream Deck Connect app over TestFlight.