Apple announced macOS 12 Monterey along with iOS 15, iPadOS 15, watchOS 8, and tvOS 15 back in June. One of the macOS features that Apple presented during the WWDC21 opening keynote is Universal Control. This feature brings cursor and drag-and-drop support to up to three Mac and iPad devices at once. It had been absent from previous beta builds of Monterey, but the latest update includes it — sort of.

The company seeded the tenth beta of the upcoming macOS release yesterday. 9to5Mac reports that the Universal Control feature has been added under System Preferences > Displays > Advanced in the beta release, but you can't enable or use it just yet. It is off by default and attempting to toggle it does nothing at all. It's worth mentioning that the settings are marked as BETA, so even after macOS 12 is released to the public, the feature might still not work as intended.

Universal Control beta settings on macos 12 monterey

While the feature doesn't work yet, it's still a promising sign that Universal Control will likely be included in the initial public release of Monterey. However, Apple could still remove it at the last minute and postpone it till a future minor release of Monterey. A similar thing happened with SharePlay, which was tested on iOS 15 Beta but won't be available publicly until iOS 15.1 is released.

If you're not sure how Universal Control works or what its potential uses are, here's an example of a possible real-life scenario:

Imagine you're working on a Keynote presentation on your Mac and decide you want to insert a drawing. So you take out your iPad and Apple Pencil and start doodling. When you're done, just bring the Mac cursor to the screen's edge towards your iPad, and the cursor will magically jump from your Mac's display to your iPad's. Drag your precious little doodle from your iPad, and take it to the edge of the screen towards your Mac. And just like that, the doodle will hop from your iPad to your Mac, where you can directly drop it into the Keynote presentation. It's as magical as it sounds.

What do you think of Universal Control, and do you plan on using it once it's available? Let us know in the comments section below.