This page gives you a basic walkthrough of the shiftscreen 4X features and possible workflows. Click on the highlighted links to get more information about the mentioned features and topics.

Connection

After downloading, you first have to establish a Monitor Connection with your iPad or iPhone.

Once connected to your monitor, follow the presented monitor setup tutorial or resolve any connection problems using the Monitor Connection article.

Open your first window

shiftscreen allows you to open up to 6 windows on your monitor. You can control your windows using the Launchpad. To open the launchpad, press the icon in the bottom right corner.

To now open your first window, select the Web Browser icon from the top left apps-overview.

Open your second window

Let's go back to the launchpad and open a PDF Viewer window by pressing on the PDF Viewer app icon. Now we have two windows. (As you might have noticed, new windows will try to find the ideal position on the monitor and fill it.)

The active window

Now that you have two windows opened, you need to understand the concept of the active window. Other than in iPadOS, you cannot control two windows at once. There is always either one or no active window.

You can see which window is active the following ways:

To switch the active window, you can either use the Launchpad, click on the window or use special Keyboard Shortcuts.

Second screen for your iPad

Okay, now we want to turn shiftscreen into an actual second screen. What we need to keep in mind is that iOS only allows the app which is in the foreground or on the left side in split-view to control the external screen. Therefore shiftscreen always needs to be placed on the left side in the iPad Split View in order to get a true second screen.

Zooming

Especially in iPad Split View or on the iPhone the normal monitor representation on your device can be very small. Here the zoom-button in the bottom left corner comes into play.

Press it once to zoom in on your device, press again to zoom out.