Apple has included great display panels in iMacs for years, but for a long time there was no way to use them outside of macOS. There used to be a feature called Target Display Mode, but it has long been discontinued. That’s a shame, because many iMacs have great displays, but they become useless as the computing ages.
But I found a pretty good solution. It requires a 4K capture card and one nifty app available on the Mac App Store. Any HDMI input can be displayed on your iMac (or USB-C iPad!), whether it’s a Switch 2, PS5, Xbox, or something else.
Sure, I have a TV in my room and can use that as is, but there’s something elegant and convenient about having a TV on my iMac display at my desk.
solution
For this solution, I used UGREEN’s 4K 60Hz capture card. At $95, it’s not super cheap, but it’s the most affordable offering from a reputable brand that promises 4K and 60Hz. Many cheaper products skimp on price and only offer 4K (30Hz). UGREEN’s capture card also supports HDR, which I haven’t tested within the scope of this project, but if you want to use a MacBook Pro screen or an iPad Pro, you can do that too. It also supports up to 240Hz (though not 4K) if you want to use it.
On the software side, I used an app called UVC Video Capture from the Mac App Store. It requires a $9.99 annual subscription (and annoyingly has a recording button with no option to hide it) – but it seems the most reliable to me, and it has a free trial. For iPad, you can use Orion from the makers of Halide. The core is free, but additional features like brightness adjustment require a one-time purchase of $9.99.
Both of these apps are very easy to use. Connect your source device’s HDMI cable (Switch 2 in my case) to your capture card, connect your capture card’s USB-C cable to your iPad, and open the app. Content should be streamed.
With this UGREEN capture card, latency is incredibly low and almost indistinguishable from native output. I played a few rounds of Mario Kart World and Fortnite using my iMac from the Switch 2, and it was great.
summary
It would certainly be nice if Apple brought back (and expanded on) Target Display Mode, allowing you to instead display any kind of USB-C video input on your iMac without the need for additional software. Initially, Apple removed this feature because Intel chips couldn’t handle it on 5K panels, among other technical limitations.
Apple hasn’t decided to move this back to Apple Silicon, so in the meantime, this capture card and app solution works wonders.
Interested in doing more with your iMac’s screen, or using your iPad as a larger display for your Switch 2? Let us know in the comments.
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