CrossHID

CrossHID: Turn Your Laptop Into a Bluetooth HID Bridge for iPad

Have you ever wanted to use your laptop's mouse with your iPad without buying another Bluetooth mouse?

That was the idea behind CrossHID.

CrossHID is a Bluetooth HID bridge that lets your laptop act as a Bluetooth input peripheral for your iPad.

It supports both mouse and keyboard input, allowing your existing laptop setup to interact with your iPad over Bluetooth.

No extra mouse.
No extra keyboard.
Just your laptop and iPad.

What is CrossHID?

At its core, CrossHID takes input from your laptop and exposes it to the iPad as a Bluetooth HID device.

The basic flow looks like this:

Laptop mouse / keyboard → CrossHID → Bluetooth HID → iPad

From the iPad's perspective, CrossHID behaves like a normal Bluetooth input device.

This makes it possible to use the input hardware you already have instead of carrying another peripheral around.

Why did I build it?

I wanted a simple way to use my laptop's mouse with my iPad.

The obvious solution would be to get another Bluetooth mouse and keep it around for the iPad.

But that felt unnecessary.

The laptop already had a perfectly good mouse and keyboard connected to it.

So I started wondering:

What if the laptop itself could act as the Bluetooth peripheral?

That question eventually turned into CrossHID.

Mouse first, keyboard too

The primary use case for CrossHID is mouse input.

You can connect your iPad to CrossHID and use your laptop's mouse as the iPad's Bluetooth mouse.

Keyboard input is supported as well, so the same bridge can handle both major desktop input devices.

That means your setup can effectively become:

Laptop → CrossHID → iPad**

with your existing mouse and keyboard available to the iPad.

How it works

CrossHID sits between the laptop's input system and the iPad's Bluetooth connection.

It captures input events from the laptop, converts them into HID reports, and sends those reports to the iPad through a Bluetooth HID connection.

The iPad doesn't need a special CrossHID app to interpret those inputs.

It simply sees a Bluetooth HID peripheral.

That's what makes the project interesting to me: the laptop isn't just sending data to an iPad application — it is presenting itself as an input device.

Platform support

Right now, CrossHID is only available for Linux.

A Windows version is currently in the works and will be released soon.

What CrossHID supports

Currently, CrossHID supports:

• 🖱️ Mouse input
• ⌨️ Keyboard input
• 📡 Bluetooth HID connectivity with iPad

The goal isn't to replace dedicated peripherals.

It's to make the hardware you already have a little more useful.

Where to try it

CrossHID is not hosted on GitHub.

You can find and try it here:
crosshid.noblelex.in

Who is this for?

CrossHID can be useful if you:

• Keep your iPad next to your laptop
• Don't want to carry a second mouse
• Want to use your existing keyboard with your iPad
• Work between a laptop and iPad regularly
• Like experimenting with Bluetooth and HID
• Just want to try something a little different 😭

It's a relatively simple idea, but it can be surprisingly convenient once everything is connected.

The project is ready

CrossHID is now finished and ready to be used.

I'm releasing it because I don't want it to remain another project that only exists on my machine.

If you have a setup where CrossHID could be useful, give it a try.

Try it here: crosshid.noblelex.in

If you run into a bug, find something that doesn't work correctly, or have an idea for improving it, feel free to reach out through the site.

What's next?

For now, I'm mainly interested in seeing people actually use CrossHID.

There are plenty of things that could potentially be improved — better device handling, more input support, broader platform support, and a more polished experience.

But I'd rather let real usage determine what comes next.

Maybe CrossHID stays a small utility.

Maybe it grows into something more.

We'll see.

Final thoughts

CrossHID started from a pretty simple question:

"Can my laptop pretend to be a Bluetooth input device for my iPad?"

The answer turned out to be yes.

So I built it.

Now I'm putting it out there for anyone else who wants to try it.

If you find it useful, I'd love to hear about it. ❤️

Happy hacking! 🚀