The iPadOS software brings new Apple Pencil capabilities that make using your Apple stylus even more natural than before, almost like writing on a piece of paper.

Apple’s branched out the iOS software into two development tracks, one targeting mobile devices like iPhone and iPad and the other specifically targeting iPad. The iPadOS software made its debut at the WWDC 2019 keynote held on June 3, 2019 ahead of its fall release.

iPadOS will arrive in the hands of public beta testers later this month.

New Apple Pencil features in iPadOS

9ms latency

Both the original Apple Pencil and its successor boast perhaps the lowest latency on a tablet at 20ms. In practical terms, this means that there’s a slight one-fifth of a second delay from the moment you start dragging your stylus across the screen to seeing the resulting action, like a pixel being manipulated or a line being drawn.

Your Apple Pencil is two times more responsive thanks to iPadOS.

20ms is very impressive, especially for a consumer stylus meant to be used with a tablet, but it definitely isn’t imperceptible. Thankfully, software tweaks to the prediction algorithm in iPadOS have cut the Apple Pencil latency more than half, going from 20ms to just 9ms. You want to have as low a latency as possible for pixel-perfect precision because nothing breaks the illusion like those perceptible delays.

Feast your eyes on a redesigned tools palette

Prior iOS versions had a decent tool palette when using a Pencil to annotate something. That familiar palette has been visually overhauled in iPadOS and now features far more illustrative icons for the different pen types. You can still choose from several drawing tools and colors, and switch to the eraser if you make a mistake, as well as double-tap the lower section of your second-generation Apple Pencil to quickly switch back to the tool you used last.

The redesigned Markup palette in iPadOS has the same tools, but now you can move it around and minimized it at will.

But now, the redesigned palette can be minimized into a small circle by dragging it into a screen corner. Even better, you can pin a full-size palette to any screen edge/corner similar to picture-in-picture overlays and make it full-size back again with a tap or a drag.

This is super handy when drawing complex illustrations that require lots of zooming and panning. Being able to relocate the Pencil palette with a flick of your finger will be Godsent for heavy Pencil users. And to help the palette get out of your way when not needed, there’s a new Auto-Minimize toggle that shrinks the whole palette down to a circular icon as soon as you start drawing with a Pencil.

Mark up any app

iOS lets you mark up an image or a PDF document in any app by tapping the Markup action in the Share sheet, just like before. But now with Apple Pencil and iPad, the whole process is even more streamlined. Instead of messing with buttons to take a screenshot and tapping the onscreen thumbnail to enter Markup, you can now mark up any app by dragging your Pencil from the lower-left or the lower-right of the display.

Drag a Pencil from either bottom corner to instantly mark up anything.

Doing so will capture a screenshot of an entire webpage, document, email or whatever you’re working on, opening it in Markup mode so it can be annotated and shared instantly.

Draw with Pencil in Mac apps

Sidecar is a new feature in macOS Catalina 10.15 that lets you use an iPad with your Apple Pencil as a Wacom-like device for drawing in Mac apps that support graphics tablets, like Photoshop, Pixelmator and so forth.

Yup, Apple’s basically Sherlocked the handy Luna Display accessory!

Aside from letting you mirror or extend your workspace by using an iPad as a second Mac display, Sidecar lets you draw with an Apple Pencil on your iPad to design in Illustrator, edit photos in Affinity Photo, create 3D models in ZBrush and more.

The Sidecar feature lets you use your Pencil and iPad to draw in Mac apps.

Pressure sensitivity and other Pencil features are supported when using the stylus in that mode. Aside from drawing, the Apple Pencil + iPad combo can also be used to sketch or mark up screenshots and PDFs on your Mac.

New Pencil features in your favorite apps

Apple already provides frameworks for developers to customize double-tap Pencil interactions. iPadOS takes this to a whole new level with a new PencilKit framework. With it, your favorite developers are able to add a full drawing experience to their apps complete with access to a canvas, responsive inks, a rich tool palette and a drawing model.

The new PencilKit API brings rich Pencil features to your favorite third-party apps.

iPadOS compatibility and availability

iPadOS will release alongside iOS 13 and other updates in Fall 2019 for these iPads:

  • 12.9-inch iPad Pro
  • 11-inch iPad Pro
  • 10.5-inch iPad Pro
  • 9.7-inch iPad Pro
  • iPad (6th generation)
  • iPad (5th generation)
  • iPad mini (5th generation)
  • iPad mini 4
  • iPad Air (3rd generation)
  • iPad Air 2

To learn more, read Apple’s press release or visit apple.com/ipados/ipados-preview.

Your take

If all Apple did was lower the latency, I’d be happy.

As someone who has been a happy iPad Pro + Apple Pencil user for two years now, I’m very much looking forward to installing iPadOS on my daily driver to give my stylus a boost. Of course, this is just scratching the surface of what iPadOS brings to the table.

This is the iPad-specific iOS release that we’ve been waiting for. Now we’ll be finally able to use USB thumb drives to import files onto our iPads, import images from digital cameras directly into our favorite image editors, use widgets on the Home screen, enjoy the awesome n productivity gestures for cut/cop/paste, undo/redo, multitasking and more.

Let us know in the comments about your favorite Apple Pencil enhancement in iPadOS!