Apple Pencil

Setup

As soon as you’ve paired your Apple Pencil with your iPad, open Procreate Dreams and you are ready to start drawing right away.

Procreate Dreams' optimized brushes work natively with Apple Pencil pressure and tilt, and Apple Pencil Pro users can access squeeze and barrel roll functionality.

Enter Draw & Paint

To use the Apple Pencil to draw, you'll need to be in Draw & Paint mode.

To do this, enter or create a movie, then create a Flipbook or Drawing using the Create menu on the far right. Once you're in the Drawing/Flipbook, you can begin using the Apple Pencil to paint right away.

Your brushes are available in the top right in Paint, Smudge, and Erase, and your sidebar sliders control the size (upper) and opacity (lower) of your brush.

Read more about Brushes .

Double tap shortcut

Double-tap the side of your Apple Pencil (2nd generation) or Apple Pencil Pro to switch tools when in Draw & Paint.

Depending on which tool you have selected, the double tap shortcut swaps between Paint, Smudge, or Eraser when in drawing mode.

If you have Eraser selected, double tap will switch the last drawing tool you had selected.

To deactivate this double tap, tap Off in the Apple Pencil → Double Tap section of iPadOS' Settings app.

Squeeze shortcut

Apple Pencil Pro users can play and pause their movie with the squeeze shortcut when using the timeline or in full-screen mode.

When in Timeline or full-screen mode, squeeze the barrel of Apple Pencil Pro to play your movie. Squeeze again to pause your movie playback. You will feel haptic feedback when squeeze is activated.

To toggle this feature, head to Movie settings → Prefs → Gestures → Squeeze Apple Pencil Pro to Play.

Barrel Roll

Apple Pencil Pro users can use the barrel roll feature to simultaneously move and rotate keyframes while performing. Find out more about performing using barrel roll in the Performing section of this handbook.

Barrel roll can also be used to control certain brush attributes such as shape orientation, color, and size while making strokes.

Pressure sensitivity

Adjust your Apple Pencil pressure response to suit the way you draw.

The Apple Pencil has a huge dynamic pressure range. This means you must press it down very hard to reach 100% pressure or opacity. If you draw with a lighter touch you may find you won't enjoy the Pencil’s full range of sensitivity using the default settings.

Use Procreate Dreams' customizable Pressure curve to adjust the feel of your Pencil. This will help you get the most out of your Apple Pencil. Adjust your Apple Pencil's pressure settings by entering Draw & Paint while in a Flipbook or Drawing. In here, tap on Settings near the top left → Prefs → Pressure. Find out more about how App Pressure Sensitivity works in the Procreate Handbook.

Smoothing

Adjust the smoothing of your paint strokes when in Draw & Paint mode.

Customize your smoothing options to suit your workflow. Head into Draw & Paint in a Flipbook or Drawing, then tap on Settings. In here, head to Prefs → Smoothing to reveal our different Smoothing options.

1. Stabilization - takes the moving average of a stroke and smooths it out more as you increase the value

2. Motion Filtering - uses our advanced algorithms to accomodate for hand tremors and other motor difficulties. This will compress outlying values and provide an average of the stroke.

3. Motion Filtering Expression - only applicable when Motion Filtering is active, increasing this will allow more of your natural expression back into the stroke as it is smoothed.

Scribble

Use Scribble for a more natural text input experience with Apple Pencil in Procreate Dreams.

Use your Apple Pencil to write in any text or numerical field where you can enter information. This includes naming layers, entering percentages and numbers, or entering type in Add Text.

You can turn Scribble off in iPad's Settings app, in the Apple Pencil section.

Hover

Procreate Dreams has integrated support for Apple Pencil hover.

With hover, your brush cursor is visible while hovering the tip of your Apple Pencil just above the canvas in Draw & Paint. When enabled, the cursor will display a preview of the size, shape, and texture of your brush, as well as the tilt and  azimuth .

You can customize your brush cursor while in Draw & Paint by heading to Settings in the top left → Prefs → Brush cursor/Advanced cursor settings.

On your Timeline, you can also use hover to scrub back and forth movie content. You can toggle this in Movie settings → Prefs → Gestures → Apple Pencil hover on Timeline.

Brush cursor works with Paint, Smudge, and Erase, making it possible to preview the result before you use your brush.