In the third beta of macOS Monterey that Apple released to developers today, there is a small Universal Control update that is designed to make it easier to access the various Universal Control settings that you might need when using the feature to control multiple Macs and iPads with a single mouse/trackpad and keyboard.
If you open up the Displays section of System Preferences after updating to the new software, there is a new "Universal Control..." button that was first noticed by 9to5Mac. The Universal Control button goes directly to the three Universal Control settings that are available.
Prior to this beta, the Universal Control options were located under the now-removed "Advanced" tab, and were just a bit harder to get to.
The Universal Control settings have not changed, even though their location has been updated. The first two settings are enabled by default and allow Universal Control to work, while the third is optional and can be toggled on to allow you to automatically reconnect to any nearby Mac or iPad you've previously connected to.
Universal Control is live in the macOS Monterey 12.3 and iPadOS 15.4 betas available to developers and public beta testers, and it is working well even in a beta capacity. The feature will be available to everyone when the updates see a public release, which could perhaps come in March following Apple's planned March 8 event.
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Thursday June 12, 2025 10:14 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
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Apple today provided developers with a revised version of the first iOS 26 beta for testing purposes. The update is only available for the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16 models, so if you're running iOS 26 on an iPhone 14 or earlier, you won't see the revised beta.
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Handoff is a bit of a different animal, isn't it. Universal Control involves mouse and cursor control across different Apple devices, whereas Handoff involves passing clipboard data (among other things?) to other Apple devices.
Handsoff is part of/required by UC. You can't turn it off while turning UC on.
UC is the ultimate solution that Apple has imagined, combining Handsoff and AirDrop with the soft-KVM, it makes multiple devices feel like one. So far the experience is so great that I couldn't live without when I have multiple Macs around. I sometime forgot that I'm using multiple Macs now and would try to drag an application window from one to another. Hopefully they can make applications work across devices someday.
Well, those three checkboxes are all that matters, and they are turned on by default iirc. Moving its location hardly matters, and unlike disastrous handoff, this one at least can’t get triggered randomly easily so I’m fine.
Handoff is a bit of a different animal, isn't it. Universal Control involves mouse and cursor control across different Apple devices, whereas Handoff involves passing clipboard data (among other things?) to other Apple devices.
I set the third option back to off, because you can't change the side of your other device automatically.
And when I took my iPad to another room and tried to use the cursor gesture to show apps in slide over, I didn't realize my cursor went to my Mac, which made me lose the cursor due to how massive my iMac screen is. I was so confused about what happened to my iPad cursor.
