How to set up and use Hot Corners on your iPad

If you enjoy using Hot Corners on your Mac for quick access to actions, then you’ll love the feature on your iPad too. Hot Corners in iPadOS let you perform specific actions while tapping and holding in one of the four corners of your iPad.

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to set up and use Hot Corner on iPad.

Hot Corners on iPad

What you need

  • iPad running iPadOS 13.3 or later
  • A mouse or trackpad

Note: Despite being a touch-based device, Hot Corners only work when you have paired a Bluetooth mouse or trackpad to your iPad or use your Mac’s mouse or trackpad on iPad. You can’t use Hot Corners using your finger or Apple Pencil.

Set up Hot Corners on iPad

  1. Open the Settings app and go to Accessibility > Touch > AssistiveTouch.
  2. Enable AssistiveTouch.
  3. Scroll down and enable Dwell Control.
  4. Tap Hot Corners and select one of the four corners – Top Left, Top Right, Bottom Left, Bottom Right.
  5. You’ll see many options, from opening your Dock to restarting your iPad to accessing Spotlight. Choose the actions you want for the selected corner.
Set up Hot Corners iPad

Follow steps 4 and 5 to set up more or all four Hot Corners.

Use Hot Corners on iPad

After you set up the Hot Corners, just take the mouse or trackpad pointer to the corner of the screen you want to perform the action you picked. Keep the pointer in that corner, and in a moment, your iPad will trigger the set Hot Corner action.

If you find that you don’t like the amount of time you need to hold your cursor in place for the Hot Corners, you can adjust this from Settings > Accessibility > Touch > AssistiveTouch. Right below that setting, change the Dwell Control time using the plus and minus buttons for the number of seconds.

Dwell Control iPad

For a hands-on look at how the feature works on an iPad with a paired Bluetooth mouse, check out this short video from us:

Hot Corners not working on iPad?

  • Make sure a mouse or trackpad is connected to your iPad.
  • Switches for AssistiveTouch and Dwell Control must be enabled for Hot Corners to work. When Dwell Control is on, the mouse/trackpad pointer size on iPad becomes bigger.
  • Restart your iPad.

Note: Clicking the time indicator from the top left of the iPad screen opens the Notification Center. Therefore, your iPad may automatically open the Notification Center when you take the mouse pointer to trigger the top left Hot Corner.