Use Your USB Peripherals with Your iPad

ByMike Moffit

If you’ve owned a Mac for quite some time and invested in various peripherals over the years, but also own an iPad, I have a tip for you! There are a lot of iPad accessories, but you can’t always afford to purchase two products—one for your Mac and another for you iPhone—to perform the same task on both. Fortunately, many accessories like keyboards, speakers, and headphones are available in Bluetooth wireless models, plus many printers and scanners have WiFi options. Using peripherals like these that are designed for Mac and iOS devices has significant advantages, but often requires purchasing a new peripheral, which is not always in the budget.

Often upgrading to a newer WiFi or Bluetooth peripheral is still the best decision and will be more compatible in the long run, but what if you have invested in USB peripherals? If you have a trusted USB keyboard (for some of us, they become an old friend), USB memory card readers, expensive USB audio equipment like microphones, mixers, or MIDI devices, there is a way! Additionally, if you need to connect your iPad to a wired ethernet network, what I’m about to reveal will do the trick too. Let me introduce you to Apple’s Lightning to USB adapters:

While originally designed for importing photos and videos from digital cameras via USB, they do support other standard types of USB peripherals, including keyboards, barcode scanners, memory card readers, and various audio devices.

The original Lightning-to-USB adapter is just that: a simple dongle you plug into your iPad’s Lightning port and into which you can plug a USB cable. The newer Lightning to USB 3.0 adapter has a USB port which supports faster speeds and more power for the iPad Pros (while still supporting all other iPads with Lightning ports), but also has a pass-through Lightning port for power so you can still charge your iPad while USB accessories are plugged in.

Note: Sadly, this accessory is designed for the iPad-only and will not work on the iPhone.

There are some USB devices, especially audio devices like microphones and MIDI adapters which require more power than the iPad can provide from its internal battery, so you’ll get an error message saying the “attached accessory uses too much power”. With the older adapter, you have to plug in a powered USB hub to work around this issue, and your iPad still can’t be charged. The new adapter provides enough power to charge the iPad as well as power USB accessories that need more power (you can still use a USB hub too, if you need to connect multiple powered devices). So, if you need to run USB accessories that require more power or might want to charge your iPad while using USB peripherals, go with the newer USB 3.0 adapter.

Using one of these Lightning to USB adapters can allow you to keep using your existing peripherals on your iPad, or invest in more expensive peripherals that will work on both your iPad and Mac. For those who want to get more functionality out of their iPad, this is a really easy way to do it. There are many musicians and podcasters who are able to carry a complete recording studio powered by just their iPad. Photographers and other professionals are finding themselves doing the same. This is yet another reminder that the iPad is a powerful and flexible mobile device, so hopefully this tip helps you get more out of yours and your peripherals!

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