It’s possible! Pair your Gen 1 Apple Pencil with your new 2021 M1 iPad Pro.

Posted by on Sep 13, 2021 in Blog | 0 comments

People said it couldn’t be done. Apple said it couldn’t be done. Well, it can be done and I’ll show you how!

Background:

I purchased a 10.5 inch iPad Pro along with a Gen 1 Apple Pencil in early 2018. This purchase was a bit of an experiment to see if the iPad Pro was good enough to be a true laptop replacement. It worked well enough to meet my core needs as an agile business analyst.

Fast forward to Aug 2021, I felt it was time to upgrade to a new 12.9” M1 iPad Pro but did not want to shell out the extra money on the Apple Pencil 2 since there weren’t any groundbreaking new features. Plus, I rarely used the Gen 1 Pencil other than to sign timesheets or other documents.

After almost a month using the M1 iPad, I found I actually missed having an Apple Pencil so I scoured the net for ways to get the Gen 1 Pencil connected to the new iPad.

A glimmer of hope:

I found plenty of stories and videos about unsuccessful attempts and assumed it was a typically Apple move to abandon old technology in favor of the new. However, one lone YouTube video where someone claimed to have success with a 2020 usb-c iPad Pro gave me the glimmer of hope I needed to persevere.

The process:

A few failed attempts following the path shown in the video had me worried but I had one final avenue to pursue. Fortunately, the old 10.5” iPad Pro was still handy as my wife had decided she wanted it. Even though it had been reformatted and restored for her, the Pencil was somehow still paired to it.

You can watch the video here:

What you’ll need:

  • Apple Pencil Gen 1
  • The lightning female to female charging adapter which came with the Gen 1 Apple Pencil
  • The original iPad to which the Gen 1 Pencil was paired
  • New M1 iPad
  • A lightning to USC-C cable
  • LightBlue app

Steps:

  1. Plug the Pencil into the lightning port on the old iPad to reestablish the connection to it
  2. Remove the Pencil from the lightning port of the old iPad
  3. Go to the Bluetooth setting on the old iPad and choose to forget the Pencil
  4. Download the LightBlue app on the new M1 iPad from the App Store
  5. Open the LightBlue app on the M1 iPad
  6. Plug the USB-C to lightning cable into the M1 iPad
  7. Use the lightning female-to-female adapter to plug the Gen 1 Pencil into the USB-C to lightning cable
  8. The Gen 1 Pencil should appear in the device list in the LightBlue app
  9. Select the Gen 1 Pencil to begin the pairing process
  10. You should get a message asking you to enter the pairing password. Use “1234” as the password
  11. End. You should now be able to use your Gen 1 Apple Pencil with your M1 iPad

IMPORTANT: If you encounter a timeout error in the LightBlue app when attempting to pair, ensure you’ve unpaired the pencil from the old iPad and try again.

Happy penciling!!