The Apple Pencil is an extension of your iPad, and it has handy features such as hover. Here’s what the feature is and how you can take advantage of it.
Imagine bringing a stylus close to a tablet’s screen, and before the tip even makes contact, you see which pen tool is selected, the width of the brush stroke, and the opacity level, as well. Or, when the Apple Pencil is hovering over the screen while a Keynote slide is open, you get a preview of the menu options before actually tapping on them. Well, that’s essentially what the Apple Pencil hover feature is all about. In general, a stylus input is only recorded on a screen as it makes physical contact with the tip and slides across the X and Y axes. With hover, the display-stylus duo also responds along the Z axis without requiring physical contact.
Apple won’t be the first to implement this unique touch-less interaction system, as Wacom’s drawing tablets have offered it for years. Aside from being integrated within Apple’s in-house apps such as Pages and Keynote, the hover system is also available across third-party apps such as Procreate and AstroPad Studio. And if you own the Apple Pencil Pro, you can even check the angle of the brush stroke and adjust it in hover mode, thanks to support for the barrel roll system.
Sounds appealing so far? Well, make sure you have a supported Apple tablet on your lap, or table, a list that includes the iPad Pro 11-inch (4th generation) and iPad Pro 12.9-inch (6th generation) with Apple Pencil (2nd generation). If you have an Apple Pencil Pro, the hover function will work with the iPad Air 11-inch and 13-inch (M2 and M3 processor), iPad Pro 11-inch and 13-inch (M4 processor), and the iPad Mini 2024 with the A17 Pro processor.
