Apple has brought some impressive improvements to this year’s iPad lineup. From an “impossibly thin” and powerful M4 iPad Pro to the Apple Intelligence-equipped iPad mini 7, there’s something here for everyone.
However, one of the unsung heroes of the lineup is the new Apple Pencil Pro, an advanced stylus with several new gestures that work hand in hans with Apple’s tablets to make drawing, sketching, and even just scribbling notes more intuitive than ever.
What’s even more remarkable is that Apple hasn’t just brought this new technology to its highest-end iPad models. The new iPad mini 7, despite having few changes from its 2021 predecessor, also gains support for the Apple Pencil Pro, including sophisticated features like the ability to hover over the screen and use new squeeze and barrel roll gestures.
The Apple Pencil Pro was one aspect that convinced me to take the plunge back into iPad mini territory. I hadn’t owned or regularly used one of Apple’s smaller tablets since the 2015 iPad mini 4, and leaned toward the full-sized models instead. However, I’ve also had a full-sized M1 iPad Air that’s been mostly collecting dust, so when I realized that it still had good trade-in value, “upgrading” to the A17 Pro iPad mini seemed like a good idea.
An ideal stylus tablet — in theory
For me, the iPad mini is just the right size for a stylus-equipped tablet. I’m not an artist by any stretch of the imagination, nor do I even need to sketch out large flowcharts or diagrams. What I do like to use a stylus for is simple note-taking, along with the occasional bit of doodling. The iPad mini 7 is a tablet I can more easily get my hands around, and it feels like a much more natural digital notepad and e-reader.
Sadly, my experience with the Apple Pencil Pro has finally made me realize why Apple’s styluses have never quite felt as natural for me as they do for some of my friends and colleagues: I’m a leftie.
According to a recent BBC report, researchers estimate that left-handed people account for between 10% and 12%of the world’s population. By extension, it means that many things are made with right-handed folks in mind. It’s a challenge I’ve encountered all my life, from finding a good set of golf clubs to learning to fly an aircraft to handling firearms during my military career. I’ve become ambidextrous in many areas — I can shoot with a camera, a rifle, or even a bow and arrow with either hand — but when it comes to writing, I’m still very much a leftie. Stick a pencil or stylus in my right hand, and my usual chicken scratch becomes completely illegible.
Lefties feel left out
Sadly, as much as Apple prides itself on accessibility — and it truly is a company that has made incredible strides in this area — the iPad and Apple Pencil Pro weren’t made with left-handed people in mind.
This first occurred to me when I used the second-generation Apple Pencil with my iPad Pro years ago. The stylus docked on the wrong side when used in portrait mode, and palm and wrist detection never seemed to work quite as well as it did for my right-handed daughter (a budding artist who adores her Apple Pencil and uses it constantly). A search through Reddit and other online discussion forums will find many left-handed folks expressing these concerns.
However, they didn’t bother me as much with Apple’s full-sized tablet, as I primarily used it as a laptop replacement with a Magic Keyboard. The Apple Pencil sat perched on top of its magnetic charging dock most of the time, but I used it so rarely that I often wondered why I even had one.
The iPad and Apple Pencil Pro weren’t made with left-handed people in mind.
That’s not the case with the iPad mini. This tablet is designed to be held and used as a digital slate, and I often find myself holding it upside down just so I have somewhere to place the Apple Pencil when I’m not using it. It works fine, but it feels awkward, and I’ve had to add my thumb to the Touch ID sensor just so I can use it from that angle.
For example, I often read study materials and nonfiction books that I like to make highlights in. The Apple Pencil is a fantastic tool for this, but I don’t want to keep it in my hand all the time. It seems like it would have been an easy solution for Apple to add some magnets on the left side of the iPad mini, even if it didn’t put a charger there, just to provide a way to dock the stylus when the iPad is being held that way.
Left-handed squeeze tools are broken
While many of the problems folks have had with the Apple Pencil over the years are subtle and hard to pin down, the Apple Pencil Pro has a more significant and noticeable bug for lefties that appears to have been there since it was introduced in May — and it remains unaddressed even in the latest iPadOS 18.2 betas.
One of the great new features of the latest Apple Pencil Pro is a squeeze gesture, which, by default, brings up a palette of on-screen tools below the tip of the stylus for changing drawing style and colors and undoing and redoing actions. It’s a neat addition, but when I first began using it, I was perplexed as to why I never seemed to be able to hit the necessary controls with the Apple Pencil Pro.
Pressing the button would always bring the tools up just fine, and it wasn’t too difficult to select a different virtual writing implement. However, the undo button was hit-and-miss, and the color selection was seemingly inaccessible; every attempt to tap it just cleared the tools and made a mark as if I was drawing on the underlying document.
Since I was running an iPadOS beta then, I shrugged it off as possibly a beta-related bug. However, one day, the tool palette came up on the other side — above and to the left of my Apple Pencil tip — and guess what? It works flawlessly in that position.
After more testing and digging, I realized that iPadOS is clever enough to figure out which hand you’re holding the Apple Pencil Pro in and display the quick tool palette in a position that won’t be covered by your hand. That’s up and to the left for right-handed folks and up and to the right for lefties.
The problem is that when the palette is on the right side, it doesn’t detect taps properly. This is clearly a design bug in iPadOS, but it’s one that’s been there since at least July, as noted by posts in the Apple Support Community discussion forums and the MacRumors forums.
After I played with it a bit more, I determined that some of the tools can be tapped, but you have to hit them in precise and unintuitive spots when you’re using the left-handed tool palette, as per the diagram below.
The Apple Pencil Hover gesture helped me identify these sweet spots, as the controls expand slightly when you hold the stylus above the screen in the correct position. However, the three-button menu control remains completely inaccessible to me — I couldn’t find any spot where I could activate it, suggesting it’s either broken entirely or the specific pixel is so small that hitting it would be like winning the lottery.
Although the hover gesture allows me to hit these tools, it also defeats the purpose of a quick tool palette. I spend enough time trying to hit the right spot, so I might as well give up and use the traditional tool palette at the bottom of the screen. Again, it’s worth mentioning that this quick tool palette experience is 100% flawless when I orient the Apple Pencil Pro so that it comes up in the “right-handed” position above and to the left of the stylus tip.
A real accessibility issue
The lack of attention to this problem makes me wonder if Apple has any lefties on its Apple Pencil hardware or iPadOS software engineering and user experience (UX) teams. It seems like it should have been easily caught during basic UX testing, and the number of reports suggests it’s not an isolated problem.
Before writing this article, I visited my local Apple Store and tried to use their Apple Pencil Pro on several iPads on display that ran the whole gamut of this year’s lineup, from the 13-inch M4 iPad Pro to the A17 Pro iPad mini. As with the person who reported this on the MacRumors forums in June, every iPad I tried exhibited the same problem when I held the Apple Pencil Pro in my left hand, yet it worked without fail when I switched it over to my right.
None of this is a deal breaker, as there are other ways to access these tools. Still, it’s frustrating coming from a company like Apple that normally sweats the details on things like this and works hard to ensure its products are as accessible to everyone as possible.
Make no mistake, this very much is an accessibility issue, and I’m not just talking about discrimination against left-handed people; there are undoubtedly people with disabilities who have no other way to use the iPad except with an Apple Pencil Pro in their left hand. Until Apple fixes this problem, it’s hard to recommend buying an Apple Pencil Pro for anyone who plans to use it left-handed.
