Keepad
Wireless computer controller
Free · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.
Keepad turns your iPhone or iPad into a wireless keyboard, touchpad, macropad, and MIDI controller for your computer.
Create custom layouts with buttons for shortcuts, macros, mouse actions, MIDI notes, MIDI CC controls, and more. Nearly every button can be customized, including its label, color, function, modifiers, and behavior.
Use layers to build different control surfaces for different apps, workflows, or machines. With the optional Beecon desktop app, Keepad can automatically switch layers based on the active app on your computer.
Keepad requires a compatible custom Bluetooth dongle, available separately with a one-time purchase.
more Keepad 3.2 adds recorded macros, smarter word suggestions, a more responsive keyboard, new appearance options, and a reorganized Settings experience.
- Record keyboard shortcuts and command sequences, assign them to buttons, adjust playback timing, and import or export macros.
- Smarter suggestions now include sentence starters, improved next-word predictions, better capitalization, faster learning, and cleaner correction behavior.
- Added optional sticky modifiers and larger effective keyboard touch targets for more reliable typing.
- Added Liquid Glass and keycap appearance styles, including clear and high-performance display options.
- Added first-run setup guidance and improved Bluetooth reconnection.
- The macropad custom strip can now sit above or below the grid.
- Settings are organized into clear categories, and colors or schemes can be applied to selected layers.
- Includes reliability, performance, persistence, and cleanup improvements across keyboard, touchpad, MIDI, Beecon, and layer workflows.
3.2 Jul 22
Keepad 3.1.1 improves word suggestions, button behavior, touchpad feedback, and layer customization.
- Added built-in color schemes and a color scheme picker when creating layers.
- Improved word suggestions with better phrase learning, confidence gating, capitalization handling (Holding shift will type out word in all caps), and support for number-prefixed custom words.
- Fixed word-suggestion edge cases around modifier keys, shifted symbols, and long custom phrases.
- Improved button release reliability, including toggle behavior for modifiers, mouse buttons, and scroll buttons.
- Touchpad two-finger drag now shows two touch indicators and clears matching toggle states when gestures take over.
- Improved layer import/export handling and added clearer conflict messaging.
- Added and refined dongle support, including device characteristic reads and firmware reference updates.
- Updated visual polish, suggestion buttons, MIDI strips, launch/app icons, and iPad Mini sizing.
3.1.1 May 31
New
- Support for the new dongle, including automatic detection and dongle-specific settings.
- Keyboard-only / full-HID mode switching for operating BIOS, GRUB, and other low-level hosts.
- Smarter word suggestions: trigram (two-word context) prediction with recency-weighted ranking, plus export/import of learned words and phrases.
- Modifier and mouse buttons can now be set as toggles.
Improved
- Faster, smoother typing — database reads moved off the main thread and new indexes added.
- Better layer import/export experience.
- iPad mini layout now works seamlessly in iOS Handoff mode.
- Scroll-inversion setting now loads and applies correctly to scroll buttons.
- More reliable Bluetooth reconnection after dongle reboots.
Fixes & housekeeping
- Beecon MIDI now surfaces a status message if unavailable and queues commands until the companion app reconnects.
- Beecon password is no longer included in config exports (re-enter per device).
- Status-message timing fixes and general polish.
3.1 Apr 20
1. New app-specific Layer Presets
Prebuilt shortcut layouts were added for Microsoft Teams, Excel, Outlook, Chrome, Slack, Photoshop, Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, and Ableton, plus platform-aware shortcuts (Mac/Windows) and faster layer setup.
2. Smarter word suggestions and prediction
Suggestions now learn from usage over time, include next-word prediction (bigrams), and ship with large seeded language data (weighted common words + common bigrams) for stronger results from day one.
3. Faster, more reliable Bluetooth + input pipeline
BLE handling was significantly hardened: better reconnect behavior, write queueing, cleaner connection teardown, and more stable mouse/scroll/click delivery under load.
4. Touchpad and mouse control improvements
Gesture handling was refined to reduce missed/competing gestures, and click/scroll command routing was cleaned up for more consistent behavior.
5. Customization system upgraded (colors + button behavior)
Button styling moved to more flexible per-button color values (instead of rigid index-based palette behavior), with centralized color/action handling and legacy migration support.
6. Layers include customization for nearly all UI elements
Buttons, touchpad, faders, and midi notes can all be customized individually for all layers.
7. New Color Scheme System
Color schemes can be created from the currently selected layer and then applied to others or all layers at once. Import and export schemes to share between devices or store backups.
8. Copy/Paste button to button
Button customization allows for clipboard-style copy and pasting to easily move buttons and build layers quickly
9. Import/export and migration improvements
Config/layer/suggestion data flows were expanded and made more backward-compatible, including improved migration from older storage/schema formats.
10. UI and device behavior polish
Orientation handling was refined (including iPhone landscape behavior), iPad window sizing was constrained for layout stability, and several view/layout adjustments were made to adhere to iOS 26 spec.
3.0 Mar 2
- Touchpad has been reworked for much higher resolution. Be sure to adjust the x and y touchpad speeds values in settings. (probably need to turn them down)
- Glissando operation has been added to all buttons. This allows for dragging across multiple pads in midi mode and better button performance.
- Fixed a bunch of bugs. The worst being stuck keys - this appears to be fully resolved.
- Added a few new settings and general improvements to connection logic.
2.1 12/01/2025
- Available for iPhone!
- Layers manager with unlimited layers
- Beecon application for macOS and Windows. Transmits the focused application from a computer to the Keepad for automatic layer switching.
- Hover Switch feature for Apple Pencil Pro will automatically switch to Touchpad View for instantly controlling the mouse from any other view. Switches back to previous view when no longer hovered.
- Word/string manager for Word Suggestions.
- MIDI View has changed to a stacked format with new root note and scale selection. 8 custom fader-style strips are now available.
- Settings View has been reorganized and now includes sections for layer, config, and custom words to be imported and exported. Additional settings were added for Beecon as well.
- UI Improvements for ergonomics and better overall organization and functionality.
- Various app optimizations for improved experience.
2.0 09/12/2025
Bug fixes:
- Scroll Speed Y settings weren't being recalled after app close and reopening
- Status message at the top was showing old wifi messaging on new installs
Other:
- The app may request local network access. It is advised that you grant it, but currently it does nothing. This is in preparation for v2 release.
1.8 06/06/2025
New Touchpad Settings and Features:
- The touchpad now allows you to "fling" the scroll similar to built-in touchpads on laptops for a much better scrolling experience. This is done by 2-finger dragging on the touchpad up/down and sort of flinging your fingers. Before the scrolling would immediately stop if you did this.
- Updated the "touchpad side" setting to be called "touchpad display" and added a "full" option to show only the trackpad (no buttons on the left/right)
- Added "touchpad speed x" and "y" sliders for tuning the touchpad's movement sensitivity.
- Added "scroll speed" slider for tuning the touchpad's 2-finger scroll speed
- Added "show click buttons" toggle for the left click and right click buttons that show under the trackpad
- Added "three finger tap" gesture setting for trackpad to fire a custom key command
Bug Fixes:
- Setting "border down" in button settings wasn't working (thanks to Mark for finding it)
- Buttons in the pressed state weren't showing the border color in keyboard view
- Removing a background image caused the image chooser to break until the settings wee closed/reopened
- Connecting to a secondary dongle while already connected was not properly disconnecting the first
1.7 05/30/2025
v1.6 Updates:
- Fixed a bug where newly named file exports would be empty.
- Fixed a UI bug that was creating a small amount of spacing on the right side of the keyboard, touchpad and macropad.
- Increased minimum iPadOS version to 17
1.6 05/20/2025
NEW FIRMWARE:
The firmware included in this version will switch all standard communications from WiFi to Bluetooth. WiFi will be disabled by default and only used for future firmware upgrades. To upgrade the dongle, make sure you're connected to it's WiFi with your iPad. Open the Keepad app and go to settings. Scroll to the bottom and choose "Upgrade Firmware." After the upgrade completes, the dongle will restart and a scan view will open in the app. After about 30 - 40 seconds, you should see "KeepadBLE" available. Tap the name to connect.
1.5 04/11/2025
- NEW: Word suggestion feature for keyboard view. To enable it, go to settings view and then switch to the second layer (layer button in main nav). As you type in keyboard mode, word suggestions will appear between the keyboard and the custom button strip at the top. This does not use AI or any outside processing. This feature is still under active development.
- Added backwards compatibility for some older iPads.
- UI Layout tweaks.
- Fixed ordering of JSON output when exporting configs.
- Fixed bug in individual button config for some without previously set border colors.
1.4 03/18/2025
- Added button borders with color and width options.
- Background image opacity now shows bg1 and b2 underneath instead of defaulting to black.
- Bug fixes and optimizations.
1.3 02/24/2025
Added firmware update feature and button in the Settings view to upgrade your Keepad dongle to the latest version. New firmware includes a bug fix for the touchpad that was affecting linux environments.
1.2 02/06/2025
General code cleanup. Adjusted positioning of labels and icons.
1.1 01/16/2025
Keepad 3.2 adds recorded macros, smarter word suggestions, a more responsive keyboard, new appearance options, and a reorganized Settings experience.
- Record keyboard shortcuts and command sequences, assign them to buttons, adjust playback timing, and import or export macros.
- Smarter suggestions now include sentence starters, improved next-word predictions, better capitalization, faster learning, and cleaner correction behavior.
- Added optional sticky modifiers and larger effective keyboard touch targets for more reliable typing.
- Added Liquid Glass and keycap appearance styles, including clear and high-performance display options.
- Added first-run setup guidance and improved Bluetooth reconnection.
- The macropad custom strip can now sit above or below the grid.
- Settings are organized into clear categories, and colors or schemes can be applied to selected layers.
- Includes reliability, performance, persistence, and cleanup improvements across keyboard, touchpad, MIDI, Beecon, and layer workflows.
more Version 3.2 Jul 22
Data Not Collected The developer does not collect any data from this app.