Apple officially delays macOS Monterey's Universal Control until spring '22

Universal Control (Image credit: Apple)

What you need to know

Apple's macOS Monterey is still missing one of its key features.
An update to Apple's website says Universal Control will not be ready until spring.

After announcing it during WWDC in June, Apple has now officially delayed macOS Monterey's Universal Control feature until spring 2022. The feature was supposed to ship with macOS Monterey's initial release, but that didn't happen and it now seems Apple is continuing to struggle with it.

Universal Control is a feature that will allow people to use a single mouse and keyboard to control their iPhone and iPad in a way that's similar to Handoff and would work much like AirPods can seamlessly switch devices.

While Apple is yet to make any official announcement as such, the macOS Monterey features page has been updated to reflect the new timescale.

Whether Apple will indeed get Universal Control out the door this spring remains to be seen, but it's fair to say there would be plenty of complaints if the feature shipped but wasn't ready. In that regard, Apple is doing the right thing by delaying Universal Control until this spring — and potentially beyond.

Apple today made macOS 12.1 available to the public, adding support for SharePlay for the first time. New iOS 15.2 and iPadOS 15.2 updates were also released alongside refreshed watchOS and tvOS updates. Even the HomePod Software saw a new update, adding support for Apple Music's new Voice Plan — a plan that's designed to be used via Siri, making it perfect for HomePods.

There's one thing we can at least be sure of here — whenever Univeral Control does ship, it'll be one of the best Mac features ever to do so.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.