Download the free Pencilera app and take perfect group shots and self-portraits by remotely triggering your iPad’s camera with your Apple Pencil.
Apple provides the Camera Remote app on the Apple Watch that makes it a cinch to take pictures with your iPhone when you can’t reach it, but it doesn’t work with the iPad. It could also be useful for taking photos of yourself or group shots with an iPad mounted on a stand or tripod. I know you can take timed shots in the Camera app. But setting timers isn’t fun, and you must restart it if the shot turns out wrong.
Enter Pencilera, a free iPad app for taking photographs with your iPad’s camera by triggering the shutter remotely. It only works with the Apple Pencil 2 and the Apple Pencil Pro, so owners of the original Apple Pencil are out of luck, but it’s free and available on the App Store right now.
Pencilera: Use your Apple Pencil as an iPad camera remote
To take a picture with the Camera app on your Apple tablet, double-tap your Apple Pencil 2 or Apple Pencil Pro. Owners of the Apple Pencil Pro can also squeeze the stylus to trigger the camera shutter. The app surfaced on the App Store on August 10 and got featured on The Verge today. Pencilera’s Om Chachad wrote in a blog post that the fun project was developed entirely on an iPad using Swift Playgrounds!
I decided that it would only be fitting for a simple iPad app, to be built on an iPad. I took up the challenge to build the entire app on iPad from start to finish; I wanted to push the iPad to its limits and see how it works out. Keep in mind this was made using a 2020 iPad Air with an A14 chip- not the M1, M2 or M4 iPad. I think Pencilera turned out amazing, and everyone who uses it will enjoy the app. I’ve put a lot of love and care into designing small elements of the app, and I hope people notice and appreciate them. I’ve had the chance to demo the app in action to people over the last 2 months, and it has left nearly everyone impressed, and some even thinking that this was a native feature of the Apple Pencil from Apple. And that’s when you know you’ve built a great app.
Pencilera is available for free on the App Store. If you like it, you can support developers by buying tips from within the app. Developers have open-sourced Pencilera on GitHub so others can contribute to the project. The app doesn’t collect any personal data.