Universal Control, Apple’s upcoming feature that lets you control multiple devices with the same mouse and keyboard, will probably not be launching at the same time as macOS Monterey. While Apple has said that the OS upgrade will be available on October 25th, its features page has been updated to say that Universal Control will be “available later this fall,” a change spotted by MacRumors.
Universal Control was one of the most impressive demos at WWDC 2021, where Craig Federhigi dragged a file from an iPad across a MacBook’s screen and then dropped it onto an iMac. While Universal Control is mostly just Apple combining technologies that it’s been developing for years, if Apple wants the real-world experience to be as good as that demo, Universal Control will have to be pretty polished — so it’s not surprising that the feature is being pushed.
While betas for Monterey have been available for months, Universal Control has been missing, so the public hasn’t actually gotten to try it out yet. It’s not the only feature that Apple’s announced and then delayed. SharePlay, which promises to let you watch videos and listen to music with friends over FaceTime, also wasn’t released with iOS and iPadOS 15. However, unlike Universal Control, SharePlay has at least shown up in a few iOS betas. (Some toggles for Universal Control have shown up in macOS betas but appear to be non-functional, according to MacRumors.)
Curiously, on the macOS Monterey page, SharePlay and some other features are marked with an asterisk that denotes it as “coming later this fall,” whereas Universal Control is marked with a separate footnote to say that it’ll be “available later this fall.” It’s possible that the different notation is because they’ll be arriving at different times or that it’s just a symptom of the delays being noted at different times. Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
