New Apple Pencil hover improvements and new features

April 5, 2023

By dayannastefanny

Although Apple announced important news about its new operating systems. Even thoughe we have to wait a few months for them to become available. Today Apple finally revealed when the new version of its tablet operating system will be available for download. This is in conjunction with the official unveiling of the new iPad Pro and the new version of the 10th generation iPad. Plus, the new Apple Pencil hover with its new improvements and features.

iPadOS 16 is the fourth and next major release of the iPadOS operating system developed by Apple for its iPad tablet series. The successor to iPadOS 15 was announced at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference on June 6, 2022, along with iOS 16, macOS Ventura, watchOS 9, and tvOS 16.

What is Apple Pencil hover?

Thanks to this new technology, the iPad can detect the Apple Pencil when the tip is up to 12 mm above the screen. Developers can use the hover feature in their apps for a variety of purposes, such as showing a preview of where the user is drawing, selecting menus, and more. And for Claire d’Este, product manager at Procreate, it makes using apps much more fun.

I find myself scrolling up and down the menus to see her reaction. There’s something great about everything when I think about what I’m going to do next. In Procreate, users can use Apple Pencil Hover to expand images or view animations directly from thumbnails. The color picker and menu buttons respond when the user moves the Apple Pencil over them. It also works on the canvas. d’Este highlights the ColorDrop function to preview colors with the Hover function.

Another element was the app’s ColorDrop feature, which instantly fills a piece of artwork as you drag color over it in a digital painting style. Scrolling the Apple Pencil allows people to see what the artwork will look like before painting, which speeds up the process dramatically.

“If you’re doing ink, like comic art, it’s huge”

says d’Este. Now, the Procreate team firmly believes that Apple Pencil Hover “solves a lot of things for creators” and that anyone using the feature will have a hard time going back to the experience without it.

New updates

Apple has finalized iOS 16.4 and iPadOS 16.4, which it has been testing in public beta since mid-February. As usual, Apple has introduced more or less the same changes to iOS and iPadOS, except for two differences. Specifically, Apple continues to improve bug detection on the iPhone 14 series. While Apple has not disclosed what changes it has made to crash detection, it is now available in Austria.

Enhanced screenshot tool

With iPadOS, you can swipe from the bottom left or bottom right of the iPad with the Apple Pencil to take a screenshot and annotate and annotate directly in the document. When capturing a web page, you can also select the entire page. You can also save it as a PDF file in the Files folder, where you can send it using the sharing options in iPadOS.

The best “pen” for any tablet

The second-generation Apple Pencil is arguably the best stylus on the market for any tablet. When Apple introduced the second-generation Apple Pen along with the 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro, it had a latency of only 20 ms, but with iPadOS, that latency was reduced to just 9 ms. According to Apple, Pencil looks more natural and now uses advanced predictive optimizations and algorithms that reduce latency.

At first glance, you won’t notice much difference. What you get and the impression you get depends on your hardware, so if you use the latest iPad Pro with ProMotion with a second-generation Apple Pencil, you’ll get the best performance, while an iPad without ProMotion and using the first generation. Apple Pencil will barely notice the improvement.

Notes

Apple’s dark mode covers the entire operating system, including the new Notes app. There is a newly redesigned tool palette that provides quick access to tools, color palettes, shapes, erasers, and pixel erasers to erase any part of a line. Most of these features, including screen capture, are also available for the first-generation Apple Pencil and for those using the Logitech Crayon.

In addition, iPadOS 16.4 contains improvements to Hover mode, but only for iPad Pro models with Apple M2 chipset technology. According to Apple, iPadOS will recognize the angle at which the Apple Pencil is held when it is within 12 mm of the screen. Instead of just the distance between the Pencil and the screen. In theory, this change allows apps such as Procreate to present a more accurate brush preview with the Pencil in Hover mode. With iPadOS 16.4, Apple added new features to the Apple Pencil’s shift function and introduced support for tilt and aspect ratio. The updated displacement feature is designed to allow artists to view a mark from any angle before making it. Making the iPad even more useful for drawing.

Scrolling functions in iPad 16.4

Leslie Ikemoto, Apple’s chief experience officer, and Stephen Tonna, Apple’s director of platform product marketing, discussed the update. Using Procreate as an example, Ikemoto said users can now see exactly where the character will appear when the Apple Pencil is placed on the screen. With tilt and azimuth, procreate can accurately sketch the mark you intend to make when you place the Apple Pencil. This is a win-win for all users. From professionals to those who can barely draw, like me. The new motion feature is compatible with native Apple features, such as Markup, and third-party apps, such as the aforementioned Procreate. Mind you, the way it’s implemented, it’s acceptable that more and more external apps will add to its compatibility. Scrolling (iPad Pro M2 only) works automatically in all apps that already support the UI cursor.

Other improvements

All of these changes to iPadOS will make the iPad Pro much more useful when iPadOS arrives next fall. You can use many professional applications such as Final Cut Pro, Maya, and Adobe Illustrator on your iPad using a pencil-enabled iPad. That is if you have a Macao Sidecar and an iPad as a secondary display.