View Horizon Client for Mac and Sidecar

[JMonsenICU]

Hi,

I've run into a possible compatibility issue with an iPad pro running in Sidecar mode with a brand new Macbook Pro.  Sidecar is a feature available on both certain models of iPad and Mac products that allow the Mac's display to be extended across to the iPad.  In this case, Sidecar seems to be working fine, as windows can be moved between the Mac's main screen and the iPad without issue.  Videos etc work fine as well, and I believe the Pen and touch bar controls work fine (remote user, I haven't tested myself).

Horizon Client runs perfectly fine in single display mode on both the iPad and Macbook Pro.  Extended screens is where the problems occur.  The guest OS we're logging into is Windows 7 SP1. When I look at the displays within the Win7 guest I see that it thinks it's extending the desktop correctly, however the iPad only shows a black screen.  We should be using BLAST protocol, but PCoIP is an available option for end users.  Is there any information on whether or not this feature is currently supported by Horizon Client?

Like most Apple tech I've tried to work with, finding technical information on how it's implemented hasn't been straight forward.  In case it helps with answering this question: Sidecar seems to require Apple's Metal Graphics API to work properly.  This is something that at least VMWare Fusion uses just fine and I would suspect that since Horizon Client works in single display mode on the iPad there's no incompatibility here.  My other thought was that this may be down to how Mac handles drawing the remote display, and it doesn't allow any extended apps in general.  Some quick Google-fu didn't bring anything up.  I checked through the Mac Horizon View client release notes for a mention of Sidecar to no avail.  Might not be a known bug or I could be doing something wrong.

Any help is appreciated with this.  Thanks,

Message was edited by: Jason Monsen. I forgot to add that we're using BLAST

[Pengq1zZ]

Hi Jason,

I just tried sidecar with latest client and agent build & Macos 10.15.5 & iPad Pro(10.5-inch) & iPadOS 13.5.1 & Guest Win10 2004 & Blast/PCoIP, but cannot reproduce this issue, sidecar worked well with 'Use all displays'.

Just want to verify and get some information from you, I would be appreciate if can get your reply.

- Host & Guest OS version

- Client & Agent build number

- Logs(Important!)

- iPad & iPadOS version

Other Notes:

- Have you tried another guests like win10 not only win7?

- Do you mean Fusion works well but Horizon View Client has this issue?

Thanks.

[JMonsenICU · Accepted solution]

Good morning,

It looks like my boss figured out a fix.  After disabling the control sidebar on the iPad when using Side Car, Horizon View works fine.  Might be that the client doesn't know how to shrink the display when sending it to the iPad with the sidebar enabled.

Adding information in case it helps others in the future:

Hosts are ESXI 6.7.0, Guest is Win7 x64 SP1 with the January 2020 patches.

Horizon agent is 7.4.0-7400533 (probably old).

The information on the remote client connecting in I'm less certain of:

Latest Macbook Pro model (Late 2019 16 inch) and should be running 10.15 Catalina

iPad Pro is about 2 years old, I think a second gen 12.9 probably running second-latest iPadOS (13.5)

At the time we had only tried Win7 and not one of our Win10 guests.  This was the first usage of Side car with our systems and my first time hearing of it.  I was in research mode trying to figure out what exactly it was and if there were known limitations.  The comment regarding Fusion Works: Sorry if it was confusing.  It was meant as an inference that since Fusion already uses Metal API chances are good that View Client should work with Side Car, as VMWare should already have experience with the API.

Thanks for the response, I think we're good!

[Pengq1zZ]

Gratitude for the quick reply!

Yesterday during our tests, sidebar on iPad is enabled, but it still worked fine. Even though your problem has been resolved after 'disabling the control sidebar', and that's really good! However, It is still a important matter for us if it can be reproduced 100% on your device when the sidebar is enabled. If so, could you please provide a log file to help us investigate it if convenient, we would be very appreciate about that.

In addition, I think this issue provides us with a good test case, we will test the scenario 'disable/enable sidebar' in future release. At last, yes, View Client already used Metal API and it should work with Sidecar. Thanks a lot!