Luna Display can now turn your iPad into a second screen for Windows devices

Astropad’s Luna Display is a handy way to turn an iPad or another Mac into a wireless external monitor for Apple’s computers. Now the company has updated its wireless dongles to include support for Windows PCs, a solid step forward for the company after Apple’s Sidecar made its functionality a built-in part of iPadOS and MacOS.

Windows support is included in Luna Display 5.0 and requires “Windows 10 64-bit, Build 1809 or later” and at least iPadOS 12.1, according to Astropad. That means modern Windows devices and iPads can work together in a variety of configurations, including using the Apple Pencil along with an iPad as a very expensive drawing tablet for your Windows machine.

The company is making Luna Display for Windows available in two types of connectors for plugging into your Windows devices, either USB-C and HDMI. Owners of the older USB-C Luna Display are also able to update to add support for Windows starting today. For what it’s worth, Astropad says the restructuring it did for its 5.0 release also means setting up Luna Display on M1 Macs should be faster.

Astropad first launched Luna Display in 2017, about two years before Apple “sherlocked” it with the Sidecar feature added in macOS Catalina. Not long after, the company updated Luna Display to work wirelessly between Macs as a response to Apple’s move. “Apple zigs, we zag,” Astropad CEO Matt Ronge tweeted at the time.

Astropad has been fairly open about its experience of being copied, including suggesting it was a blessing in disguise when it announced it was testing Windows support in beta (other companies preferred taking legal action). The Kickstarter for its new Luna Display for Windows dongles launched on September 30th, 2020 and was successfully funded just an hour later. People clearly want this functionality for Windows, and now Astropad is finally offering it.

Luna Display is $129 for Mac or PC, with port options for USB-C, HDMI, and Mini DisplayPort.

Source: Luna Display can now turn your iPad into a second screen for Windows devices – The Verge