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Comment by sillysaurusx | Hacker News Reader

Hey procreate fans, I need your help. I have a broken iPad for an artist friend of mine. The screen’s busted, but it turns on. It’s under Apple Care plus. But I hesitate to use it, because they’ll replace the iPad, and procreate has made the horrible decision not to sync any of the art to iCloud, so my friend will lose all their artwork.

Is our best option to pay for a screen replacement? It’ll be hundreds of dollars, but that’s preferable to losing their procreate catalog.

I already lost some art of theirs when they were playing around on my iPad, which I was bummed about, so I’m not eager to repeat that experience.

EDIT: sorry, I should’ve posted this as a top level comment. I didn’t mean to intrude. I was just trying to salvage a year or so of work. Thank you everyone for your wonderful ideas.

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You may be able to visit an Apple Authorized Service center (like some BestBuys) and ask if they're able to replace the screen without wiping the device. May will accept Apple Care as well.

Map: https://getsupport.apple.com/repair-locations

Thanks! I had no idea Apple worked with Best Buy. Much appreciated.

Similar to the other commenter’s suggestion, you might want to do a local backup of the iPad that’s encrypted (iirc encrypted backups include more data). Hopefully the procreate artwork will be saved in that backup. However, you need to unlock the iPad first to do that I think. Even though the screen is busted, you can turn on voiceover using Siri and unlock the iPad using that potentially. Although, this requires that the screen is still able to detect touch input despite being broken / unable to display anything. Even if you don’t think it can detect touch input it’s still probably worth a shot just in case it can

If it is a USB iPad, you can plug it into an external display. USB-C to USB-C monitor, or get a USB-C to HDMI or DVI adapter. You can also use a USB or Bluetooth mouse if the digitizer is broken.

Whoa. Does it automatically turn on? Note that I can’t get past the lock screen. Otherwise that’s a wonderful idea and I might try it anyway. Thanks!

Plug it into a USB-C dock and plug a USB mouse in. You can tap the lock screen code in that way, or you can type with a USB keyboard.

Note: iPads only support USB-C displays that operate in "DisplayPort over USBC" mode, not "HDMI over USBC" mode (which requires more active circuitry), so only some USBC monitors will work. If you're worried, I suggest grabbing a DisplayPort-to-USBC dongle and plug it into the iPad that way.

See here for the difference: https://hackaday.com/2023/01/17/all-about-usb-c-high-speed-i...

Brilliant, thank you so much.

And thank you HN. You’ve helped salvage an artist’s work. Hopefully procreate will back up their art to iCloud one day.

One of the features discussed in the keynote for this new app's announcement is that they are adding iCloud syncing as an option, and that all relevant new features coming to Procreate Dreams will also be added to Procreate. To me that sounds like there's a good chance they'll add iCloud sync to Procreate soon!

If you back up the iPad locally, will it back up Procreate data? I would expect it to...

I don’t think we can without unlocking the iPad, and there seems to be no way of doing that with a busted screen. Kind of an oof failure mode.

If iCloud backup is on, and your friend didn't explicitly disable it for Procreate, then the data should be available for restore via iCloud:

https://doncorgi.com/blog/procreate-icloud-backup/

I think you can see the last backed-up day (but not list of apps for other devices) somewhere on iCloud.com or in settings on some other iPhone/iPad on their account. Alternatively, you could try restoring to a new/temporary old iPad.

The external monitor + keyboard suggestions in sibling comments could be combined with this advice (or other backup procedures in the article I linked), assuming backup is disabled.

I somehow experienced data loss with procreate at one point, but maybe it was some weird accident. You’re right that procreate seems to advertise iCloud sync. All I know is it didn’t work when I needed it most, so I was leery of just blindly trusting it when the data is currently sitting on my table.

Thank you for pointing that out.

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