This page opens on plain white with touch lock turned on. The regular black screen brings up its buttons whenever you tap it, which is handy until the side of your hand is resting on the glass and a bar keeps appearing over your drawing. Here a tap in full screen does nothing. Three quick taps bring the buttons up, including Exit full screen, and on a keyboard Esc still exits.
Setting up to trace
- Turn the screen’s brightness all the way up in the device’s settings or control center. A web page can’t change it, and the brighter the white, the thicker the paper you can see through.
- Press Full screen and lay the tablet flat on the table.
- Put the picture you are copying on the glass and the tracing paper on top, and hold both down with low-tack tape along the edges so they don’t slide.
- Trace with a light hand. LCD screens react to pressure, and a clear plastic sleeve over the glass spreads the pencil’s point and keeps graphite off the screen.
Make an iPad ignore every touch
Touch lock stops this page from reacting, but the iPad still has gestures of its own. Safari on iPad keeps a close button on a full-screen page that can’t be hidden, and a swipe down leaves full screen, so a hand sliding across the paper can drop you out of it. Apple’s Guided Access has a setting made for this, which Apple describes as “Ignore all screen touches”:
- Open Settings, tap Accessibility, then Guided Access, and turn it on. Under Passcode Settings, set a Guided Access passcode. Guided Access’s own Display Auto-Lock option sets how soon the iPad locks during a session, so give it enough time for a drawing.
- Open this page in Safari and press Full screen.
- Triple-click the top button (the Home button on iPads that have one), tap Session Settings (or Options), turn Touch off, and tap Start.
- When you finish, triple-click the same button (double-click on iPadOS 18 and earlier), enter the passcode and tap End.
While the session runs, the screen won’t respond at all, so line up the paper before you start it.
Android tablets and touchscreen laptops
Touch lock works the same way in Chrome on Android, but the system’s back gesture is a swipe in from the left or right edge of the screen (Google’s Android help), and the page can’t block it. Tape the paper so its edges stay clear of the sides, and rest your hand toward the middle. On a touchscreen laptop folded flat, taps are ignored too; moving the mouse or touchpad brings the buttons back.
Tracing letters and names
For handwriting practice, print a name tracing worksheet instead: the dotted letters are already on the page. The plain black screen has the other colors, and the OLED test checks a screen for burn-in. The video call light offers warmer whites if you need a light rather than a light box.