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Jump Desktop for iPad has revolutionary Bluetooth mouse capabilities thanks to jailbreak tweaks [Video]

When you jailbreak your device you pretty much accept that you fragment the way your device works. Jailbreak tweaks is one community, one eco system, and App Store apps is another. Occasionally, however, what you get from one benefits something from the other, such as the trick with symbolic links (a jailbreak-only tweak) suddenly opening up a lo of possibilities for normal App Store apps.

Turns out that such cross compatibility gem is hidden in the way the jailbreak tweaks BTC Mouse & Trackpad (the successor to BTstack mouse) interacts with the remote desktop app Jump Desktop. Jump Desktop is a RDP/VNC client, which means it’s an app/service that utilizes the existing VNC and RDP protocols to allow users to connect to their computer remotely. Like other such apps, it uses a touch-to-mouse system for allowing the user to handle a mouse-controlled UI from the touch-controlled iPad, which isn’t the world’s most intuitive system at times.

Normally, when you use BTC Mouse & Trackpad to connect a mouse to your iPad, that mouse will actually emulate touch. This means that when you connect to a remote computer, your BT mouse won’t act like a PC mouse, because in reality the mouse is emulating touch, which in turn emulates the mouse. This means that the cursor only updates when you click the mouse button, as that’s when it emulates a screen touch. The right mouse button in those cases will be mapped to the iPad home button, which is part of how BTC Mouse & Trackpad works. So, if you try to right click to copy text, you actually leave the app.

However, with Jump Desktop it’s different. BTC Mouse & Trackpad has built in support for Jump Desktop, which allows it to let the connected mouse take direct control over the computer mouse. This means the mouse works the way you expect it to with regards too tracking, left and right clicking. Move the mouse, and the cursor moves. Right click, and you right click in the app. It’s the way it should work, naturally, but it’s also the way it doesn’t work in most remote desktop apps.

I’ll do a full review of Jump Desktop in a few days, but I just wanted to share this little discovery right away. As far as remote computing goes, it’s outright revolutionary, as there’s no substitution for using a proper mouse when you remote control a UI that’s actually made for a mouse. Having a mouse at all is of course useful, but it just works so much better when it works exactly how a mouse should. The best part of it is that since this works by having a unrelated jailbreak tweak take control of Jump Desktop, rather than Jump Desktop adding compatibility for the tweak, Apple can’t put the blame on Jump Desktop.

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Andreas Ødegård

Andreas Ødegård is more interested in aftermarket (and user created) software and hardware than chasing the latest gadgets. His day job as a teacher keeps him interested in education tech and takes up most of his time.

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