You’ll soon be able to use Surface Dial on your Microsoft Surface Pro 4 Touchscreen
On-screen support for Microsoft Surface Dial is coming to the company’s signature Windows 10 tablet, this week.
Owners of the larger-than-life Apple iMac Pro’s direct competitor, the Microsoft Surface Studio, have come to familiarize with the hockey-puck shaped specialized accessory, for which Microsoft promised to extend support onto other devices as well, especially the Surface Pro. While the Surface Dial does indeed work on Pro 4 tablets, it does so exclusively as a desk-bound accessory since early 2017. On-screen support however is a different proposition altogether, and an exciting one at that, as the upcoming firmware update is going to enable users to activate and interact with on-screen menus and controls, by placing and operating the Surface Dial on the tablet’s touch screen, in the same way as it is done on Surface Studio desktops.
While hardware support is definitely spreading, at least throughout Microsoft’s product lines, apps support seems to be still in its infancy, in a similar way as the Touch Bar on the latest Macbook Pro laptops, although in the case of the Surface Dial, adoption by app developers seems more likely to gain traction, considering the straightforward nature of the technology.
At the current stage, Adobe Photoshop is one of the few big players making a bid to support the Surface Dial, aside from a list of 17 apps and counting:
- Revu
- Drawboard PDF
- Sketchable
- Moho 12
- Spotify
- StaffPad
- Word, PowerPoint, Excel
- OneNote
- Windows Maps
- Plumbag
- Sketchpad
- Groove Music
- PewPew Shooter
- Microsoft Photos
- Paint
- Adobe Photoshop
The good news for those who are interesting in buying the latest Surface Pro, is that support for the Surface Dial comes right out of the box.
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