The one thing that has been missing from the Cloud PC experience on iOS is now possible!
I’m talking about mouse support in the Windows app on iOS (on iPhone 15 or newer)!
Mouse support for the Windows app on iOS is now in preview, and you can use two different Microsoft mouses:
- Surface Arc mouse
- Surface mouse
In order for it to work, you need to install the latest drivers for the mouse, which is quite straight forward.
- Download the driver for your mouse
- Run the MSI package with elevated privileges
- Connect your mouse to the Windows computer you are using
- Keep the mouse on for 10 minutes connected to the computer (for me this took a little longer)
You can find more information here: Use keyboard, mouse, touch, and pen in Windows App – Windows App | Microsoft Learn
Next step is to pair the mouse with your iPhone 15 or higher, and then you are good to go!
Just connect your iPhone to an external monitor using USB-C and make sure to also have a keyboard connected (either through Bluetooth or through a USB-hub connected to the screen) and you are ready to work from your Cloud PC in a new way!
But when would you use this?
I can see a lot of different use cases for this, but two pretty obvious ones comes to mind first:
- I’ve for some reason forgot to bring my laptop (but brought my Surface mouse)
- My computer is broken and I can use my iPhone to access a Windows 365 Reserve machine or my regular Cloud PC
But there are probably lots of other instances you could use this to access your Cloud PC. Get creative! Maybe you wanted to travel really light.
If we look at Android, there is a larger array of supported mouses since Android works in a different way when it comes to mouse support. Same goes for the iPads, a much wider array of mouses are supported.
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