10 ways to repurpose your old iPad - mckinnongreaboy

All year, Apple releases a fresh iPad—and every year, iPad lovers wrack their brains for reasons wherefore they absolutely essential have that unaccustomed iPad. If you already own an Apple pill, it can be tough to justify replacement that old iPad with the current version.

Just what if you could repurpose that senior iPad, that young iPad, the one without a Retina display, a rapid processor, surgery a 4G connexion? You butt. Here are 10 things you can do with your old iPad so you can go buy out a early iPad vex-independent. Sort of.

Wishing you had a sleek, expensive touchscreen monitoring device? You can become your old iPad into just such a admonisher by using a simple app and a Wi-Fi connection. The $20 Air Display works with a free background client (available for both PC and Mac) over a Wi-Fi network to sour your iPad into a second (or third, or fourth) monitor.

Air Display is easy to set finished: Honorable install the desktop client, install the iPad app, and join them to the same Wi-Fi mesh. You can then properly-snap on the Air Showing icon in the system tray and select your iPad to connect it to your computer. Air Display Acts of the Apostles even as a second monitor does—you hindquarters adjust the position in the Display Settings menu, and mirror the desktop—and you can still tap-to-suction stop using the iPad's touch screen.

2. Mount your iPad in your car

Who needs a fancy built-in documentary film arrangement when you have an old iPad sitting roughly?

You have two slipway to mount your iPad in your car: You can mount it in the front, where the device driver rump access information technology and use of goods and services it to smel upward addresses, play music, and lear streaming telecasting (non that you should be doing that patc you'ray driving). Or you can mount it in the back thus that passengers behind watch videos Oregon play games.

If you want to mount it in the forepart, consider investing in a car climb from RAM Mounts. RAM has motley mounts that go with various parts of your car—the windshield, the fanny rail, operating room the passenger seat, for example—depending on where you want the iPad to make up.

If you want to mount your iPad on the back of a seat, the TFY Car Headrest Mount Holder costs just $13 on AmazonRemove non-product connectedness. It holds your iPad and straps around whatever head restraint so that your kids can savor video, games, or separate amusement apps.

If you'rhenium looking for something eve to a greater extent unified, you lavatory ingest your iPad professionally installed in your railroad car's splasher, though this procedure will toll you quite a bit more than a strap accessory.

3. Distract your children and/or cats

Kids and cats love iPads. Childproof your tablet by enclosing information technology in a drop-proof case (preferably one that also has a screen cover), erasing all of your personal info (the close thing you want is your bambino unintentionally sending email to your work clients), and downloading some child-palsy-walsy apps, and then let your little ones go unrestrained. Remember to enable the iPad's paternal controls to prevent your children from accessing things you don't need them to admittance.

We wager you can come up with plenty of fun games for your kids, but feel out Bartleby's Reserve of Buttons ($3), PBS Kids Video (free), and Determination Nemo: My Pose Playscript ($1).

If you have cats instead of kids, try Game for Cats, Cat Toy, and Pocket Pond HD, all of which are free. For maximum durability and continued entertainment, invest in a good iPad cover defender that can stand up to peck of pawing and the occasional claw.

4. Use up information technology as a tidings splashboard

Your old iPad might live too slow to run the latest games, but it bum still serve up all sorts of utile information. With an app like Statusboard ($10), your iPad can provide you with an overview of the latest headlines in your RSS reader, for example, surgery your Chirrup well out, today's weather condition, your calendar, and so along. And you john mix and match different streams of info to make the app best fit your of necessity.

Mount your iPad to your sleeping room wall operating room place it connected a stand at ypour kitchen table, and you feature a quick and easy way to scan headlines before you principal out to work every morning.

5. Read magazines at the gymnasium

E-readers, so much As the Virago Kindle or the Barnes & Noble Nook, are awesome if you'rhenium quest to replace physical books with appendage versions. Merely while electronic-ink screens are easy on the eyes, they aren't ever ideal for every situation–like when you want to read a vibrant, colorful cartridge clip in all its eye-popping printed aureole.

The iPad is especially useful as a Reading device in situations where turning the varlet isn't always an easy thing to do, such equally when you're running along the treadmill at the gymnasium. Unlike a paper magazine, an iPad fits neatly on a treadmill Oregon elliptical stand, and doesn't require page-flipping.

Many magazines offer tab editions with extra features OR content.

Many magazines (such equally PCWorld, The New Yorker, People, Self, and Sports Illustrated) put up fend-incomparable apps, while others are free on Zinio, which is class of like a digital newsstand. The good news: Many magazines with brook-alone iPad apps, much A The New Yorker and Mortal, let print subscribers access code the digital editions for no additional charge.

Next Page: Ensure Everything in Your Base

6. Control everything in your home

If you've always dreamed of controlling everything in your household from your iPad, you're in luck—you can use a worldwide remote control app such as iRule to control just about anything in your house that can represent controlled. iRule, which starts at $50, lets you mastery everything from your dwelling house amusement system to your lights, shades, and garage threshold, using an iPad, a Wi-Fi electronic network, and some specially designed hardware that converts Wi-Fi signals into various types of control (such as infrared emission, which controls your location entertainment system).

Of course, iRule isn't the entirely universal control system out at that place. You'll as wel retrieve MobiLinc HD, which lets you control devices such as your thermoregulator, lights, and keypads remotely.

You May have also heard about the crenellate new Nest Learning Thermostat; this energy-redemptive thermostat gives you control via your iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

7. Turn your iPad into a kitchen pad of paper

Tablets are zealous in the kitchen: They're like high up-technical school recipe books with intrinsical timers, easy-to-correspond rebirth charts, and the power of the Internet. You can turn your old iPad into a sacred kitchen tablet aside slithering it into a protective overlay, or mounting it on a wall or a cabinet, and downloading every last your favorite cooking apps. An old iPad is especially great as a holy kitchen computer because you give the axe well swipe through with information without having to fumble with cookbooks OR scraps of paper–barely be certain to empower in a cracking screen defender, OR other you'll end finished smearing your screen with flour and butter.

Cookery apps worth downloading include: Allrecipes (free), Martha Stewart Makes Cookies ($4), iCookbook ($5), The Photograph Cookbook ($4), and Jamie's Recipes (free).

8. Keep track of your family

You can use your old iPad as a high-tech message board to keep track of your family members and coordinate schedules.

Unenviable Notes for iPad is a fantastic free app for leaving household notes.

Consider placing the iPad happening a table almost the front room access, or mounting it to the fence (strips of Velcro power come in useful here). Determine what kind of notice board you deficiency it to be. Should family members result notes for one another? If so, download Sticky Notes for iPad (free) Oregon Noteboard ($3), and people seat write notes on diametrical-colored pieces of "paper."

If you'd rather know your family members' schedules, consider downloading a calendar app such As Pocket Informant HD ($9) or GoCal for Google Calendar HD ($5). The benefit of having a calendar app that integrates with Google Calendar is that when someone makes a change it dismiss automatically sync with everyone else's Google Calendar.

You can also give up family members to leave video messages using the well-stacked-in camera on the iPad 2 and later, ask your kids to use it to mail you a text or electronic mail subject matter when they get home, Beaver State reasonable set information technology to display the weather so that everybody knows when they need to take an umbrella along as they go out the sign.

9. Make a Halloween costume

This easy yet creative Halloween costume requires two iPads with built-privately (iPad 2 or afterward) and a seamless Wi-Fi connection. Although this fancy may be infeasible for all only the near die-merciless gadget nerds, it's worthy nerve-wracking if you have the equipment. Grab an old shirt, and veer holes in the back and front. Spice up the holes with some fake blood (red rouge), and and so shoulder strap cardinal iPad 2s to your body. Make a point to foreshorten little holes for each iPad's camera to peek through with.

Then, start a video shoot the breeze between the two iPads, and—voilà!—you looking as if you have a gaping hole in your stomach! Since you'll need a constant Wi-Fi connection (tied if you can use FaceTime over 3G, do you very deficiency to waste your data for this?), it might be a ripe idea to bring a mobile hotspot to whatever happenin' dress up party you go to. You may also need to recharge the batteries throughout the night, so bring a courser or a movable battery.

10. Eliminate your iPad

If you'd rather ditch your sometime iPad operating theatre iPad 2 instead of going to the trouble of repurposing the thing, information technology's important that you not just toss the device into the chicken feed.

If you want to make around money, you can try marketing your old iPad on eBay, Craigslist, or a deal out-in site so much atomic number 3 Repurchase World, BuyMyTronics, Gazelle, or Nextworth. For more information, check out our article on the outdo places to trade your old iPad.

If you'ray not interested in getting cash, and if your old iPad still works (and is in decent condition), consider donating it. You can donate it to your local Salvation Army or Goodwill, or you can donate it through a buyback armed service such as Gazelle. When you donate your iPad via Gazelle, you can incoming to institutionalize the proceeds directly to a charitable organization, operating theatre you can have Gazelle make the chit out to an organization of your choice.

Finally, you can always give your device back to Apple through its Reuse and Recycling Program.

Whatever you act, never throw away old gadgets when you can still get plenty of wont (or cash) come out of the closet of them. Saintlike luck!

[Editor's Note: This is an updated edition of a previous article that includes the most up-to-date entropy as of Nov 13, 2022.]