Understanding the blue gear icon on iPad

Hello, I have a blue icon with a gear in the upper right corner on my iPad. What does it mean?




[Re-Titled by Moderator]

iPad Air, iPadOS 18

Posted on Feb 15, 2025 06:26 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Feb 15, 2025 06:46 AM

The icon indicates that your iPad is synchronising with "something".


Yours is one of many reports seen in recent weeks. At present, pending confirmation by Apple, this appearance of the icon is believed to have some relationship to post-update synchronisation tasks performed by your iPad after updating to iPadOS 18.x - or the icon appears while a download is being performed as a background task.




Apple have not yet provided a definitive explanation.


Apple's documentation is often slow to catch-up with new features. Here is another status icon - that appears briefly when connecting some USB-C hubs - that Apple have yet to add to their documentation:



2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Feb 15, 2025 06:46 AM in response to Matveyk

The icon indicates that your iPad is synchronising with "something".


Yours is one of many reports seen in recent weeks. At present, pending confirmation by Apple, this appearance of the icon is believed to have some relationship to post-update synchronisation tasks performed by your iPad after updating to iPadOS 18.x - or the icon appears while a download is being performed as a background task.




Apple have not yet provided a definitive explanation.


Apple's documentation is often slow to catch-up with new features. Here is another status icon - that appears briefly when connecting some USB-C hubs - that Apple have yet to add to their documentation:



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Understanding the blue gear icon on iPad

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