If you have an iPhone running iOS 17 or newer, you may have noticed that when you put your phone on a MagSafe charger and turn it sideways, it creates a smart display. This shows you the clock and widgets you can select to display on your phone.
Unfortunately, iPadOS doesn’t offer this when you turn the display sideways. So, if you want to create your own smart home display, you have to be a bit creative.
First, you need to figure out a way to keep the screen from shutting off. Going into Settings > Display & Brightness > Auto-Lock and selecting Never keeps your display on at all times. Apple does warn you that this will affect your iPad’s battery.
From here, you can open your smart home platform app of choice. This might be Alexa, Google Home, Apple HomeKit, Samsung SmartThings, or something else. Once you have that open, you can maneuver to the devices portion, actions portion, or whatever page within the app that you want.
It should be obvious, but certain pieces of technology are too old to actually be useful. You need a tablet that offers you the right operating system to be able to use the smart home display software.
You have to check the operating system for whichever tablet you have, whether it’s an Android tablet, iPad, or another. You must have at least Android 9.0 or newer to run Google Home, for example. For many of the smart home platforms, you need at least iPadOS 17 to run them.
For the most part, tablets can be turned into smart displays because their screens are touch-enabled and they can respond to voice commands. This is what you want in a smart display, as you’re able to control certain aspects of your home from it.
It’s easiest to set up a smart display once you already have a smart home that’s set up. You can do it as you’re setting devices up for the first time, but it will have to be updated more often as you add more devices. This is because you’ll have to refresh the tablet and the display after you add devices.
I personally use Amazon Alexa as my go-to smart home platform. Many of my smart home devices run through Alexa, meaning I can control them with my Echo Show speakers, which also double as Thread Border Routers.
Source:
https://www.makeuseof.com/tablet-settings-turn-to-smart-display/
Diem ‘Richard’ Nguyen
Liên Minh Bảo Hiến Mỹ Gốc Việt
Vietnamese American Conservative Alliance (VACA)
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