When you are making video calls for hours a day, make sure directly in front of your iPad screen you may get tired. But if you want to move (e.g., want to show something or if you’re cooking), it’s essentially impossible unless you have someone following you.
The Center Stage feature on the iPad takes care of that. When enabled, the iPad’s camera will automatically scroll and zoom in to follow you.
How does Center Stage work on the iPad?
Apple uses some clever machine learning tricks to zoom and pan the camera automatically. Compatible iPads all have a wide-angle camera lens, and by default, the iPad only shows a cropped view (the one centered on the face).
But as you move, the camera view will also scroll and scroll to focus on you. If another person enters the view, the camera will reduce the image (to its large actual view) to cover more people. All of this happens automatically, so you don’t have to worry.
How to turn on Center Stage on your iPad
Center Stage is integrated into the FaceTime app, but also works on third-party apps that support the feature. Applications such as Zoom, Google Meet, WebEx, Skype, Microsoft Teams and Filmic Pro incorporate Center Stage.
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FaceTime has the Center Stage feature enabled by default, but if it’s not, you can enable it from the “Configuration”Application. Go to “FaceTime“And activate the section”Central stage”Characteristic.
Then, when you’re on a FaceTime call, open the options menu. From there you can enable or disable the “Central stage”For the call.
It is the same agreement for third party applications. Open the “Configuration”And search for the application in question (it can be Zoom or Google Meet). Then activate “Central stage.”You will find a new center phase button in the video calling interface of the application, and from here you can enable or disable the center phase feature for the call.
Which iPads do Center Stage support?
While Center Stage is a software feature, it relies on newer high-quality wide-angle cameras, and these are only available on certain iPad and iPad Pro models. The following is a list of iPads that support Center Stage:
- 12.9-inch 5th generation iPad Pro (released in 2021)
- 11-inch 3rd generation iPad Pro (released in 2021)
- 9.2 generation 9th generation iPad (launched in 2021)
- 6.3-generation 8.3-inch mini iPad (released in 2021)
As of 2021, four of the five latest iPads have the Center Stage feature. The only iPad missing from the list is the iPad Air 2020.