Your iPad just isn’t a whole substitute to your Mac, however every year, the pill will get increasingly options that make it act like a full-fledged laptop. Artist Kaleb Cadle found the most recent of those options—the flexibility to format exterior drives utilizing an iPad runnomg iPadOS 18. Quickly after, MacStories contributor Niléane confirmed that this function additionally works on iPhones operating iOS 18.
The way to format exterior drives utilizing your iPhone or iPad
Credit score: Kaleb Cadle/Substack
First, you want an iPhone or iPad operating iOS 18 or iPadOS 18. Comply with these directions to replace your gadget, however watch out for those who’re utilizing your important gadget, as putting in a beta may introduce instability to it.
Subsequent, join your exterior drive to the gadget. This may increasingly require an adapter in some circumstances. As soon as you have plugged within the drive, open the Information app, lengthy press the identify of the exterior drive within the sidebar, and faucet the purple Erase button.
You may now see the brand new choices, which is able to can help you select the filesystem to your exterior drive. You’ve three selections: APFS, ExFAT, and FAT. Click on by way of right here for a breakdown on every format. Decide an choice to format the exterior drive accordingly.
The function works with onerous disks, pen drives, and even SD playing cards as long as you will have the correct adapters.
Why format a drive on iPad or iPhone?
Loads of folks use their iPhones and iPads for skilled functions, like creating pictures and movies. Typically, these information should be moved to exterior drives. Having formatting choices baked into the OS helps all those that need to use their iOS units as productiveness instruments, since it’s going to maintain them from needing to succeed in for his or her Mac or PC.
Having stated that, your Mac’s Disk Utility is a way more highly effective device than what you may discover within the iOS 18 or iPadOS 18 Information app. Along with formatting, Disk Utility lets you partition drives, restore them with content material from one other drive, and might try to restore drives which can be supplying you with hassle. One other factor value noting is that Disk Utility lets you select the Mac OS Prolonged file system, which is unique to Macs. You possibly can’t select that choice in your iPhone or iPad, however on the flip facet, the APFS format is unique to iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 units.
The choice to format drives is a optimistic improvement for iOS units, however there is a lengthy strategy to go earlier than your iPad can completely exchange your Mac.
