Tablet accessories

The Hand Glider is a perfect no-frills solution for palm rejection on the iPad

At a Glance

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The Hand Glider One Finger Hand Glider Tablet Glove

Perhaps no tool will make an artist feel more at home on the iPad than the $20 Hand Glider, a lightweight sleeve for your wrist and pinky that prevents your skin from triggering multitouch gestures or wayward marks while using a stylus. By outward appearance alone, the glove looks a little silly, but its function far outweighs its design quirks. (I tested the One Finger Hand Glider Tablet Glove; the company also sells a $25 Two Finger Hand Glider Tablet Glove, which, as its name implies, covers two of your fingers.)

The Hand Glider may look a little comical, but it works perfectly.

Though the Hand Glider website specifies both left and right-handed models, the two are anatomically identical—the only difference is which side of the glove hosts the company logo. I found that the one-finger version provided me with the right number of free fingers to still perform the iPad’s multitasking gestures, though I expect your mileage may vary.

When working, you can drag your pinky on the screen to your heart's content without triggering the iPad touchscreen's sensors.

Learning to trust the glove may be the biggest hurdle to using it: I wore it for nearly 30 minutes before I realized I was still drawing in my stilted iPad way, fingers and palm curled around the stylus so as not to accidentally brush the digital canvas.

After forcing myself to relax and draw like I would on paper, the positive aspects of this glove were immediately apparent: You can focus on minuscule details you might otherwise have to zoom in to work on. Your hand becomes much steadier. Your fingers don’t cramp around the stylus. In general, I found my sketches when using the Hand Glider were much looser and more enjoyable than their pre-Glider counterparts, especially when using a program like Paper.

The Paper app is a whole lot more fun to draw in when you can focus on the little details without accidentally triggering wayward brushstrokes.

The glove is surprisingly lightweight and gives off very little extra warmth—you should have no worry about overheating your body while you draw.

No, the Hand Glider isn’t an engineering marvel; instead, it’s simply the right tool for the right gadget. And if you love to draw on your iPad, it’s a no-brainer.

[Serenity Caldwell is a Macworld associate editor who knows a thing or two about drawing on the iPad.]