Skip to Content

Astropad's New 'Slate' App Lets You Control Your Mac With Your iPad and Apple Pencil

After several months of beta testing, Astropad is today officially launching its Astropad Slate app for the iPad. Slate turns an ‌iPad‌ into a large trackpad for a Mac, complete with Apple Pencil control.

astropad slate
With Slate, you can use an ‌iPad‌ and ‌Apple Pencil‌ to perform several useful tasks. The ‌Apple Pencil‌ serves as a cursor for controlling the desktop mouse, and a tap on the screen is used as a click.

When you write on the ‌iPad‌, it is translated into typed text on the Mac, and there are two-finger gestures for actions like scrolling and zoom. If you have a newer ‌iPad‌ that supports ‌Apple Pencil‌ hover, you can use the hover gestures. For older iPads, Astropad added a simulated hover option.

In Mac apps that support drawing, sketching, and other creative work, you can use the ‌iPad‌ as a drawing tablet. It essentially serves as a no-screen interface for drawing, with the focus on the Mac.


You'll need an ‌iPad‌ that runs iPadOS 15 or later and a Mac that runs macOS 11 or later to use Astropad Slate. The devices can be connected over Wi-Fi, Peer-to-Peer networking, or an appropriate USB cable.

The Astropad Slate app is priced at $19.99 and can be purchased from the App Store. [Direct Link]

Popular Stories

MacBook Neo Feature Pastel 1

First MacBook Neo Benchmarks Are In: Here's How It Compares to the M1 MacBook Air

Thursday March 5, 2026 4:07 pm PST by
Benchmarks for the new MacBook Neo surfaced today, and unsurprisingly, CPU performance is almost identical to the iPhone 16 Pro. The MacBook Neo uses the same 6-core A18 Pro chip that was first introduced in the iPhone 16 Pro, but it has one fewer GPU core. The MacBook Neo earned a single-core score of 3461 and a multi-core score of 8668, along with a Metal score of 31286. Here's how the...
imac video apple feature

Apple Unveils Seven New Products

Friday March 6, 2026 11:48 am PST by
Apple this week unveiled seven products, including an iPhone 17e, an iPad Air with the M4 chip, updated MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models, a new Studio Display, a higher-end Studio Display XDR, and an all-new MacBook Neo that starts at just $599. iPhone 17e features the same overall design as the iPhone 16e, but it gains Apple's A19 chip, MagSafe for magnetic wireless charging and magnetic...
Apple MacBook Pro M4 hero

Apple Planning 'MacBook Ultra' With Touchscreen and Higher Price

Sunday March 8, 2026 8:05 am PDT by
Apple is planning to launch an all-new "MacBook Ultra" model this year, featuring an OLED display, touchscreen, and a higher price point, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports. Gurman revealed the information in his latest "Power On" newsletter. While Apple has been widely expected to launch new M6-series MacBook Pro models with OLED displays, touchscreen functionality, and a new, thinner design...

Top Rated Comments

tweaknmod Avatar
27 months ago
Imagine working hard on something then finally releasing it - and an accompanying media release - only to see the comments full of people mocking your product, even though they are in no way the target audience, would never be interested in such a product, and don’t understand it - yet they feel the need to tell the world how useless they think it is.

It’s a niche product. If this isn’t for you, and you “don’t get it”, ask about it respectfully or just move on with your life, maybe?

The widespread acceptance of disrespectful comments by people who don’t realize/care that people who worked on this stuff read them will never stop frustrating me. And I refuse to stop calling it out when I see it.

To the team who launched this - and I know they’re monitoring these forums, cause I do that for a living: Congrats on the launch! Good luck 👍
Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Jhonjhon236 Avatar
27 months ago

So … a Wacom tablet?
Pretty much, but great if you have an iPad but not a Wacom.
Score: 21 Votes (Like | Disagree)
turbineseaplane Avatar
27 months ago
So … a Wacom tablet?
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
27 months ago

Why not just a touchscreen Mac? Odd solution to, well I'm not sure.
I'm not an artist, but it seems like this would be much more convenient than drawing on my laptop screen.
Score: 6 Votes (Like | Disagree)
27 months ago

Why not just a touchscreen Mac? Odd solution to, well I'm not sure.
Apple wants to sell 2 devices instead of 1.
They believe the user experience is better with 2 highly focused devices instead of one lesser capable 2 in 1. I’ve used the windows 2 in 1s and they’re ok for what they are, but not nearly as polished as separate devices, imo.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
27 months ago

Pretty much, but great if you have an iPad but not a Wacom.
What's the use case here?? "I have a tablet which is great for drawing, but I hate direct visual feedback and would instead prefer to use that tablet which is great for drawing as a slave device to a big monitor."

If that, why not just mirror the tablet's screen to a monitor?
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)