I made a MacPad out of my new-to-me MBP 2019 16" (oyamasan) and a new iPad Pro (akasan). Follow MacStories posts for the details, but here I’ll add a few notes and musings from my adventure. Note that this works fine with my Intel-based machine. Apple Silicon isn’t required.
When I removed oyamasan’s cracked display I did not want to remove the antenna array that sites on top of the display connectors, so I cut the ribbon cables to get the whole thing out of the way. I cleaned out all of the display bits including the display controller board.
Here’s the thing: you need that controller board to do the headless Sidecar hook-up. Happily I cleaned it up and remounted it in oyamasan’s case but left it disconnected. Once I reconnected it, things worked as Frederico described.
Second, for the Shortcut to work one must complete the ssh session login information in two spots. The Shortcut as it is does not prompt for filling that out, so make sure you do so. Leave the “Input” field blank.
Third, after manually initiating Sidecar one needs to go into System Settings – General – About – System Report. Under Hardware – Graphics/Displays, look at the value under Displays: Sidecar Display: UI Looks Like: and jot down the first number in the screen dimensions. That value goes into the Shortcut at the item that says “If Screen Width is 1389”. Replace the 1389 with whatever value you jotted down. For me it was 1376.
Next actions are to:
· Use SSH keys instead of username/password · Figure out how to get BetterTouchTool working with the TouchBar to launch the Shortcut (BTT is doing something I can’t sort out on my initial tries) · Evaluate switching to Screens 5 for the Remote Desktop connection when needed · Post some pictures of it in action
