Do you happen to have an extra iPad laying around the house that you no longer use? I kept my iPad 2 for years before finally upgrading to the iPad Air 2, which meant the iPad 2 just sat in a desk drawer. But why waste a perfectly good iPad, right?
I previously wrote about how you can setup dual monitors in Windows, but that requires a second monitor. Luckily, with some ingenious software, you can use your older iPads (2nd, 3rd, or 4th generation), iPad Airs (1 & 2), or iPad Pros as a second screen or second monitor to your Mac or Windows PC. This basically involves installing an app on your iPad and on your computer and then connecting the two directly using either a lightning cable or 30-pin cable (dock connector).
My favorite app and the only one I recommend is Duet Display. There are other options like Air Display and iDisplay, but both cost about the same and don’t work nearly as well. The direct connection between the computer and iPad make the experience virtually lag-free, which is very important when using a second screen. Trying to do this over WiFi (i.e. Air Display) was just painfully slow and not a good implementation.
Duet Display
It’s also worth noting that Duet Display was created by ex-Apple engineers and is probably one of the main reasons it works so well with iPads and Macs. The app costs $16, which is super-expensive when you look at the price of most apps in the App Store, but I would think of this more like a standard Windows or Mac program.
Getting everything setup is very straight-forward and doesn’t require any kind of account creation or anything like that. First, go ahead and download the app onto your iPad. Note that you can also use your iPhone as a second screen, but it was kind of useless in my tests. You definitely need a bigger screen in order to do any work properly.
When you open the app, you’ll get some really simple instructions that tell you to go ahead and download the software on to your computer first.
Tap Got It and you’ll see a screen asking you to connect your iPad to your computer. Before we do that, however, we need to install the software on the PC or Mac first.
Go ahead and download the PC or Mac program onto your computer and install it. On the Mac, you’ll get a sleek rectangular install screen on startup.
Click the Start link, check I Agree and then click Authorize and Install on the next screen.
After the installation is complete, you’ll be asked to restart your computer. Go ahead and do that. Once you log back on, you should see a final screen telling you to find the Duet icon in the menu bar in OS X or the system tray in Windows.
If you click on the icon, it will ask you to connect your device to the computer.
At this point, open the Duet Display app on your iPad and then connect it to your computer. It should automatically detect your computer and mirror the screen. Here is what my setup looked like by default.
Here I am using an older MacBook Pro Mid-2009 with an iPad 2 and everything looked pretty good. Everything was a little small on the iPad, but that’s because it’s an older iPad 2 and because I had it setup to mirror the display. If you click on the icon in the menu bar, you can change the settings.
You’ll see Extend Display at the top, followed by Mirror Display, Framerate and Pixel Quality. If you want to extend the display to the iPad rather than just mirror it, go ahead and select one of the four options: Regular Resolution, iPad Pro Resolution, Retina Resolution, or High Resolution.
Note that you will not be able to select anything other than Regular Resolution if you are using an older iPad like the iPad 2. You can use Retina or High if you have a retina iPad. The iPad Pro option is obviously for only iPad Pros.
What I really liked about Duet Display is that the second screen really acts like a separate second monitor. What I mean is that you can drag windows from your main screen onto your iPad and have different apps open on each screen. Here’s a screenshot of Chrome open on my MacBook Pro and Maps open on the iPad.
You’ll notice that on the iPad there is a menu bar and also the dock. What’s really cool is that you can have multiple desktops on the iPad and on the main Mac. While my mouse is on the iPad screen, I can also use all the normal trackpad gestures to swipe between desktops without changing anything on the main Mac.
Definitely using a higher resolution iPad like the Air or Pro makes everything look a lot nicer.
I didn’t run into any trouble on my Mac, but I did run into some issues on my Windows laptop. Luckily, their customer support is excellent and I had the issue resolved in a matter of hours. Apparently, I needed a different video driver, which they emailed me, and that fixed the problem.
If you’re planning on using this with a desktop computer, you’ll probably need to buy yourself a 6-foot lightning cable and also some sort of stand so that your iPad can be placed right next to your monitor.
Overall, if you find yourself not using your iPad all that often, converting it into a second monitor is a great option that costs way less than the traditional method of using two monitors. If you have any questions, post a comment. Enjoy!
Jun 02, 2016 09:08 am | Aseem Kishore | Cool Websites
How to Browse and Search Instagram from a PC
Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, is one of the most popular photo sharing services. The app is available on multiple platforms, including iOS, Android and Windows Phone. Unfortunately, there is no official desktop client for Windows or Mac, even after all these years.
There are many third-party programs out there with funny names that try to incorporate “insta” or “gram” or “pic” somewhere, but after trying out many on my own, I suggest staying away from them. None of them seem to work properly and it’s probably because Facebook really wants people to use their own apps to browse Instagram.
Luckily, you can use the web interface to search and browse Instagram on your Windows, Mac or Linux PC. For me, being able to view the pictures on my desktop is more pleasing to the eye than on my small smartphone. Viewing Instagram pictures on a tablet like the iPad is also way better than using the mobile apps.
Unfortunately, since most people use Instagram from their mobile device, the web version hasn’t improved much over the years. The biggest problem is that the web interface still displays images at a horribly low resolution (600×600). Luckily, there is a trick you can use to view a higher resolution version of the picture (1080×1080), which I will mention below. Note that the original image may be a much higher resolution, but the full resolution photo doesn’t even get saved.
Browse & Search Instagram
When you log into Instagram from the web, you’ll see images from your personal feed (the people you follow).
At the top right, you’ll see three small icons. The first icon with the diamond in the center is the Explore feature. It doesn’t quite work exactly the same as the explore tab on the smartphone app. There you see a lot more pictures and videos that are popular or that their algorithm determines you might like.
On the web, it seems like the explore feature just shows you content from people you may know. Also, it really doesn’t show up more than just a new users and that’s it. Overall, it’s quite a lame discover/explore tab.
The best way to use the web interface is to search for the stuff you are interested in. You can search in one of three ways: for people, for places or for hashtags. If you’re looking for someone in particular, just type in their name in the search box or type in their Instagram user name.
The list of results is not random. It’ll first try to show you people you are following, followed by famous or verified people. Those users have a little blue star with a check mark in the center (verified badge).
To search for places, just type in the location. Note that in the results, you should see the map icon instead of the hastag icon for an actual location.
When you click on the result, you’ll get a map at the top along with the Top Posts for that location. If you keep scrolling, you’ll see the Most Recent posts also.
Finally, you can search for hashtags, which are the main way people tag their photos and videos on Instagram. Just start with the hashtag symbol (#) and type in your interest.
As you type, you’ll get lots of suggestions that can help you find exactly what you are looking for. Again, the results page will show you top posts and most recent below that.
The only issue, like I mentioned above, is that when you click on an image, the display size is tiny! Even beautiful high resolution photos are shown in a small box.
It would be fabulous if you could just click on the image again and it would appear full-screen or at its highest resolution, but that just doesn’t happen. Luckily, there are a few quick hacks you can use to get the highest resolution image stored by Instagram.
View High Resolution Images on Instagram
In order to get the better quality image from Instagram, you have to look through some source code. It’s not the most elegant way or the easiest per say, but it’s the only way as of now. Luckily, the instructions are really easy to follow and you really don’t have to understand anything about the code. All you have to do is click a few times and copy/paste.
The first thing you should do is click on the image so that it appears like the screenshot above in a lightbox. Now right-click on the image and choose View Source or View Page Source. This option should be available on all major browsers. Note that if you don’t see the option, try right-clicking again on a different part of the page.
You’ll see a whole bunch of code that might not make sense, but that’s fine. Press CTRL + F on your keyboard to bring up the Find on Page search box.
You will probably get about 15 results, but the only one you are interested in is the one where the line starts with <meta property=”og:image”. You’ll see the phrase cdninstagram is inslide of a long URL that starts with https://scontent-iad3-1 or something similar. All you have to do is copy that entire link between the start and end quotes. Open a new tab and paste that into the address bar:
You should now see the entire 1080×1080 max resolution image in the browser window. You can right-click on it to save it if you like. If that doesn’t work, there is another way to find the URL. Firstly, you should use Google Chrome. When you right-click on the lightbox image, choose Inspect instead of view source.
Again, you’ll see the source code in all its technical glory. If you right-clicked on the image when choosing Inspect, it should have an inner DIV highlighted. Right above that, you should see a DIV with a class=”_jjzlb” value. Expand that and you’ll see the same link I had mentioned above.
You can click on the <IMG section to highlight it and if you hover your mouse over the HTTPS link, you’ll see it shows you the size Instagram is displaying the image at and the “natural” size of the image. Just right-click on the link and choose Copy link address. Again, just paste it into another tab to view the full resolution image.
Overall, using the web interface is the best way to browse Instagram from a computer. Hopefully, in the future, Facebook will update the web interface so that you can view the higher resolution images without the hack. Enjoy!
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