Originally published at: https://tidbits.com/2019/08/12/buy-the-best-lightning-to-usb-adapter-for-ios-13/
If you’re looking forward to USB drive and mouse support for your iPhone and iPad in Apple’s upcoming iOS 13, make sure you get the right Lightning adapter. You want the bigger one.
So, on my iPad Pro 12.9 3rd generation needs a male USB-C connection, not a lightning connector. Is there a dongle I’m not seeing or one coming?
You can use any of the many inexpensive USB-C hubs on the market. I have a few I’ve been testing but nothing stands out enough to recommend it over anything else.
A good question—none of us have a USB-C iPad Pro to test with. My suspicion is that keyboards will work fine with just a standard USB-C to USB-A adapter.
What I can’t tell from any articles I’ve found is if thumb drives will take too much power and thus require a powered hub. Apple doesn’t mention iOS 13 here yet:
And this AppleInsider article talks about the problem on the iPhone, but doesn’t mention it with regard to the iPad Pro.
My understanding is the USB-C port on the newer iPads Pro provide enough power for thumb drives and the like.
The Apple lightning to USB-C camera adapter is the preferred device for the new direct iPhone migration technique Which avoids Data transfer from iCloud or iTunes, probably as noted, because of the power requirement.
I have been using a thumb drive with USB and Lightning connectors for several years but it has been very limited with the apps that can use it. I suppose it is too much to hope that iOS13 will fix this and allow, say, the TV app to access video files on the thumb drive (using my ancient iPad Air2).
The TV app may not be able to do that specifically, but VLC and other apps probably will. VLC is pretty impressive in what it can access when running in iOS already.
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