The new hover mode of iPad Pro is either a gimmick you will never use, or it will make Apple Pencil more fluid. Let's see how we can use it correctly. Pick up the Apple Pencil, place it on the iPad Pro and you're in hover mode. Finish.

iPad Pro's new hover mode is either a gimmick you will never use, or it is to make Apple Pencil more smooth. Let's see how we can use it correctly.

Pick up the Apple Pencil, put it on iPad Pro, and you are in hover mode. Finish. The ultimate most useful part of

hover mode will depend on how third-party application developers do the development.

What do you need to prepare to use hover mode

• Apple Pencil Second generation
• M2 iPad Pro
• iPadOS 16.1 or later

How to use hover mode

Just put Apple Pencil close to the screen of iPad. There seems to be no setup to do, and it doesn't seem to require any configuration.

Apple says that when the pen tip is 12 mm (0.47 inches) away from the screen, the M2 iPad Pro will detect the Apple Pencil.

What happens next

M2 iPad Pro can detect the proximity of the Apple Pencil, its posture, and its angle close to the screen. Then how it handles this information depends on the application.

For example, Pixelmator 2.8 and Pixelmator Photo 2.1 for iPad use the hover feature to enable live preview when you hover Pencil over the color adjustment display of the app.

Then when using the crop tool, you can also hover the Apple Pencil over the canvas to temporarily view the original image, or move it away to see the crop results.

Currently, hover mode is only available for the second generation of Apple Pencil and M2 iPad Pro.

Since the new hover mode is a combination of software and iPad Pro hardware, it is not expected to be updated to older iPads.