I’ve often seen apps that let you use your iPad as a secondary display featured and praised highly on app review websites. Apps like Air Display and other solutions that rely on a wireless connection have never worked for me as advertised. I was skeptical of Duet Display as well. It received a ton of good press from websites on launch and I finally decided to give it a shot when Apple featured it. Duet Display is currently featured in Apple’s Get Productive promotion.
Duet Display relies on a wired connection between your iOS device and Mac and a helper app that can be downloaded for free from here. It requires a restart after installing on OS X and that’s basically all the setup that is needed. Launching the app on your iOS device that is plugged in to the Mac will automatically trigger Duet Display. The companion app has a lot of customization options like refresh rate (30 or 60 fps) and resolution. Duet Display supports touch gestures as well for scrolling and right clicking. I’ve been using Duet Display on an iPad Air 2 and a 2011 13” MacBook Air and it works wonderfully. They advertise 60fps Retina Display performance with no lag and I didn’t notice any issues while using the iPad. The iPhone 5 on the other hand had some lag issues and such but I would never use my iPhone as a secondary display anyway. The iOS app has been designed really well. It is simple and elegant. The minimal interface has nice glyphs and a connecting animation. The about button tells you how to setup Duet.
Duet Display is currently 50% off on the App Store at just $7.99. I’m glad there finally is an app solution that actually works as advertised. Support for Windows is in the works as well.