How to activate Center Stage on your iPad

When you’re making video calls for hours a day, sitting right in front of the iPad screen can get tiring. But if you want to move around (say, want to show off something, or if you’re cooking), that’s essentially impossible unless you have someone to follow you.

The iPad’s Center Stage feature takes care of that. When enabled, iPad’s camera automatically pans and zooms to follow you.

How does Center Stage work on iPad?

Apple uses clever machine learning tricks to automatically zoom and pan the camera. Supported iPads all have a wide-angle camera lens, and by default the iPad only displays a cropped view (the one centered on your face).

But as you move around, the camera view will also pan and zoom to focus on you. If someone else enters the view, the camera will zoom out (to its actual wide-angle view) to cover more people. All of this happens automatically, so you don’t have to worry about it.

How to activate Center Stage on iPad

Center Stage is integrated with the FaceTime app, but it also works in third-party apps that support the feature. Apps such as Zoom, Google Meet, WebEx, Skype, Microsoft Teams, and Filmic Pro integrate Center Stage.

FaceTime actually has the Center Stage feature enabled by default, but if it doesn’t, you can enable it from “Settings“application. Go to the”FaceTime“, and activate the”Center stage” characteristic.

Then, when you’re in a FaceTime call, bring up the options menu. From here you can enable or disable the “Center stage”For the call.

The same goes for third-party apps. Open the “SettingsAnd search for the app in question (it could be Zoom or Google Meet). Then activate “Center of the stage.”You’ll find a new Center Stage button in the app’s video call interface, and from there you can turn the Center Stage feature on or off for the call.

Which iPads support Center Stage?

While Center Stage is a software feature, it relies on new, high-quality wide-angle cameras, and these are only available on select iPad and iPad Pro models. Here is a list of iPads compatible with Center Stage:

• 12.9-inch 5th generation iPad Pro (released in 2021)
• 3rd generation 11-inch iPad Pro (released in 2021)
• 10.2-inch 9th generation iPad (released in 2021)
• 6th Generation 8.3-inch iPad mini (released in 2021)

In 2021, four of the last five iPads have the Center Stage function. The only iPad missing from the list is the iPad Air 2020.