Sidecar Display
Connect your iPad over Sidecar and force it to extend instead of mirror, without touching your main display.Sidecar Display
Connect your iPad over Sidecar and force it to extend instead of mirror — from a hotkey or the menu bar — without ever writing or relocating your Mac's main display.
It drives Sidecar through a small Swift helper, so it needs nothing else installed. No AppleScript, no System Settings window, no UI-tree scraping.
BetterDisplay is optional, and only for one thing: if you run a BetterDisplay virtual screen as your main display, macOS tends to bring the iPad up mirrored. Fix Mirroring repairs that. Without virtual screens you never need BetterDisplay.
Setup
You need macOS with Sidecar support, and an iPad signed in to the same Apple ID.
- In Raycast Settings → Extensions → Sidecar Display, turn Background Refresh on for Auto-Reconnect Sidecar. That is what restores the link after sleep or a drop.
- Optionally pin Connect Sidecar and Disconnect Sidecar to hotkeys, or drive everything from the Sidecar Status menu bar.
The menu-bar item also refreshes about once a minute. Turn Background Refresh off on Sidecar Status if you would rather it only update when opened — friendlier to menu-bar managers like Bartender or Ice, and easier on battery.
Optional: Fix Mirroring
Only needed if you use a BetterDisplay virtual screen as your main display.
- Install BetterDisplay and keep it running (
brew install --cask betterdisplay). - Leave CLI integration enabled (on by default).
- Leave Auto-Fix Mirroring on, or run Fix Mirroring by hand when the iPad comes up showing a copy of your desktop.
Tested against BetterDisplay 4.3.5 with Pro; non-Pro is unverified.
Commands
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
| Connect Sidecar | Attaches the iPad and applies the configured mode (extend by default). Safe to run when already connected. |
| Disconnect Sidecar | Detaches the iPad. Safe to run when already disconnected. |
| Auto-Reconnect Sidecar | Restores a link that dropped on its own (for example after sleep). Run it by hand to reconnect now, regardless of the auto-reconnect switch or the transport setting. |
| Fix Mirroring | Clears Sidecar's own mirror mode when the iPad is showing a copy of your main screen. Needs BetterDisplay running, with a virtual screen present. Briefly reshuffles the desktop. |
| Sidecar Status | Menu-bar item: connection and nearby/away state, connect / disconnect / extend / mirror, an Auto-Reconnect toggle, and a device picker when more than one iPad is paired. |
Preferences
| Preference | Default | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Show iPad Name | off | Show the iPad's name beside the menu-bar icon while it is connected or nearby. Off keeps a constant-width icon. |
| Auto-Fix Mirroring | on | Run Fix Mirroring automatically on each fresh connect. Needs BetterDisplay running and a virtual screen; skipped silently otherwise. Turn this off if your iPad only occasionally mirrors, and use the command by hand. |
| Display Mode | Extend | What the iPad does once connected: extra desktop space, or a copy of your main display. |
| iPad Name | (empty) | Leave empty to auto-detect. Set it only to pin one iPad when you have several. The name must match exactly as macOS shows it. |
| Auto-Reconnect | on | Reconnect automatically after a drop. Only chases links that dropped by themselves — a deliberate disconnect is never fought. The menu-bar toggle overrides this once you use it. Also needs Background Refresh on Auto-Reconnect Sidecar. |
| Auto-Reconnect When | Always | Which connections count as "my iPad is here". Cable Only reconnects just when it is plugged in — the closest thing to "I am at my desk", so it will not grab your iPad from across the room. Connecting by hand always works. |
| Give Up After (hours) | 24 | How long to keep trying an iPad that looks present but will not connect, before stopping so macOS stops showing connection-failed notifications. Counts time actually spent trying — not while the iPad is away, your Mac sleeps, or the presence check cannot answer. 0 tries forever. |
Notes
- Auto-reconnect and the menu-bar status are polled about once a minute, not event-driven. Changes you make through the extension refresh the icon immediately; a change made outside it (Control Center, unplugging) can take up to one interval to show.
- Connecting the iPad from Control Center or the AirPlay menu does not run the extend/mirror logic, and auto-reconnect will not treat that as an intent to keep the link alive.
- macOS itself decides which display is main when Sidecar attaches, and can put main on the iPad. The extension reports that and leaves the arrangement to you — it never writes the main display.
- Sidecar's own mirror mode is invisible to every display API, so Fix Mirroring cannot detect the mirrored state. It runs on a fresh connect (when opted in) or when you invoke it.
- Unplugging a USB-connected iPad while it is in Airplane Mode makes macOS show "Sidecar can't connect wirelessly…". That is macOS trying to continue the session over Wi-Fi, not this extension — it appears even with auto-reconnect off.
- Presence detection reads an undocumented macOS field, so it may change with a future release. A wrong reading cannot silently stop reconnects: connecting by hand always works, and a periodic recheck still fires.
