Apple Sidecar not working with Photoshop

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
September 19, 2024
4 replies
1989 views

I have Photoshop on my MacAir and want to use my iPad as a drawing pad. But I can't get documents to open on the iPad. When I establish a Sidecar connection and then open Photoshop from the iPad, it opens on the iPad, but it also opens on the Mac. I can select "File - New..." and "File - Open..." on the iPad, but the document opens only on the Mac. When I hover over the green button on the document window, "Move to iPad" is greyed out.

I have the latest system versions: MacOS Sequoia 15.0 , iPadOS 18, and I'm using Photoshop version: 2024 (25.11.0).

I tried the solution posted here previously

Quit Photoshop
Disconnect sidecar
Connect sidecar again
Relaunch Photoshop.
But it didn't work. Any suggestions?

M

MarissaL.B.

Participant

I found this video and it worked for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVAt2erHEZo

TLDW... Add your ipad as an extended dsplay in your settings. Then drag your Photoshop window over as if it was a second monitor.

Conrad_C

Community Expert

I have Sidecar working, although my Mac is still on macOS 14. The iPad is on iOS 18, but it was working before.

From your description, you may have two separate issues going on.

When I establish a Sidecar connection and then open Photoshop from the iPad, it opens on the iPad, but it also opens on the Mac.

How do you want to use Sidecar? To repeat what’s on the Mac display (mirroring), or to use the iPad as an additional display (extended desktop)? From what you’re saying, the two displays are showing the same thing but you don’t want them to. That means you should make sure Screen Mirroring (Sidecar) is set to Use as Separate Display, not Mirror.

When I hover over the green button on the document window, "Move to iPad" is greyed out.

By @Soda19

That’s happening to me too. Move to iPad is unavailable no matter what I change. I don‘t know why, except that the Photoshop window system, carried over from Classic Mac OS (the 1990s), is still slightly different than the current macOS window system so some macOS window features don’t work as expected. Only recently did Photoshop start supporting macOS Full Screen mode, and that only works if you enable it in Preferences. (Changing that setting did not make Move to iPad work for me.)

The fact that Move to iPad doesn’t work should not stop you. It’s just one way to do it. The way I do it is to drag the document window to the iPad. In other words, once you have the iPad set to Use as Separate Display, it should work just like any other attached display, so most normal (unrelated to Sidecar) multiple-display techniques work. So the traditional method of just dragging the window to whichever display you want has always worked and still works.

Kevin Stohlmeyer

Community Expert

@Soda19 Photoshop has not built a release yet that is compatible with Sequoia.

Conrad_C

Community Expert

As of September 19, the date of the following Adobe help article, Adobe claims Photoshop is compatible:

Can I run my Adobe apps on macOS 15 Sequoia?

It lists Photoshop 25.12, the current version, as compatible with Sequoia.

That’s what helped me suspect that the real problems with Sidecar here are probably a combination of Sidecar settings (having mirroring enabled) and the Photoshop window system still not being totally macOS compatible in the first place. Since I was able to reproduce, and unable to resolve, the dimmed Move to iPad command on macOS 14, which is definitely supported.

S

Soda19Author

Participant

PS. Now I'm using Photoshop 25.12 - still not working

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