Slide Over, one of the best iPad multitasking features, got rescued from the rubbish heap with the new iPadOS 26.1. It’s an ideal way to keep an application that you check frequently but not constantly within easy reach — it’s offscreen but accessible with just a flick of a finger.
Here’s how to use Slide Over, and why you shouldn’t ignore the option now that it’s back in iPadOS 26.1, which launched on Monday.
iOS 26.1 beta 4, which Apple released to developers Monday, brings two major new updates — and they both offer ways to turn off existing features.
Find out what the new toggles do, and everything new we have found in the first four iOS 26.1 betas so far, below.
Gestures are a great way to become an iPad power user. They help you easily navigate through apps, switch between pages, access controls, and reduce multiple taps to a single swipe. iPad gestures prove especially useful for Stage Manager, the iPad’s alternative multitasking environment.
Apple designed these iPad gestures to mimic natural, real-world movements, making them intuitive to use and learn. Swiping, pinching, tapping and other moves feel familiar. You should find them easy to master.
If you use your iPad a lot, these gestures are well worth learning. Your fingers will thank you!
Google finally lets Gmail users read their email while also displaying another app. Apple introduced Split View multitasking way back in 2015, but it’s just now coming to this popular email application.
A concept artist proposes Apple make a sliding iPhone, not a folding one. The iPhone Slide Pro boasts a second touchscreen that hides behind the primary one.
Watch a video of the concept device in action:
Apple is bringing true trackpad support (and improved mouse support) to the iPad. Get ready to enjoy it by learning all the new gestures from Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering.
In a new video released by Apple Wednesday, Federighi demonstrates the improvements and shows how simple swipes can help you access Control Center, switch between apps in Slide Over, return to the Home screen, and more.
iPad multitasking, Split Screen and all that stuff, has been getting a bad rap recently, and rightly so. It’s a mess. But amidst this storm of iPad hatred, there’s one great feature that stays great: Slide Over. On the iPad, Slide Over lets you dock a mini, iPhone-size version of an app over on the right side of the screen. You can swipe this away to hide it, and swipe again to bring it back out.
That’s cool, and very handy (as we shall see in a moment). But even better is that you can dock a whole bunch of apps over there, ready to use, and then fan out the stack to help pick the one you want. Let’s take a look. You’re going to love this.
Apparently, some people really hate multitasking on the iPad. It’s easy to see why. All you have to do is accidentally drag a link in Safari, instead of just tapping on it, and you end up with a split-screen view, with that link in its own window. And getting rid of that window is a huge pain, even if you know how to do it.
Fortunately for people who hate iPad multitasking — which isn’t really multitasking, but is Apple’s term for the confusion of multiple-window views on iPadOS — Apple lets you turn off the feature. Here’s how to disable iPad multitasking (and why you might not want to).
By now, you know that you can use multiple windows from the same app in iPadOS 13, just like you can on the Mac. And you probably also know that it’s a pain to open a new window from scratch. You have to open the app, then slide the Dock up from the bottom of the screen, then tap the app icon again, then tap the little + icon at the top right.
But did you know that there’s an easier way to open a new window in iPadOS? You can just drag an item to the edge of the screen, and drop it there to open it in a brand-new Split View window. Let’s check it out.
In iOS 13, Slide Over goes from being a useful-but-annoying novelty, to being an essential utility. Instead of only letting you dock one app window to the side of the screen, and sliding it out for a quick look or edit, Slide Over is now fully integrated.
In iOS 13, you can have multiple Slide Over panels, you can switch between them as easily as switching apps on an iPhone, you can open almost anything into a Slide Over pane, and you can easily turn a Slide Over app into a full-screen app. Here’s how it all works.
Apple has dropped a series of how-to videos that help you get the most out of iPadOS. You can use them to master features like Slide Over, Split View, and brand-new gestures.
In the next version of iOS, the iPad will be able to open several “copies” of the same app. You can then switch between them, treating them just like any other individual apps, or you can combine these instances with other apps.
For example: You could have one “space” with your Mail app and your to-do app in a 50:50 Split View. And then you can have another space with a different instance of your Mail app and, for instance, the Notes app. Each version of the Mail app can show a different folder or message.
You can even have two versions of, say, the Maps app, sharing the same screen, showing totally different places. It’s a powerful addition to iPad multitasking. Let’s see it in action.
iPad multitasking gets a boost in iPadOS, with tweaks and enhancements that make it easier to do more on Apple tablets.
If you use an iPad for anything beyond watching videos, you should be thrilled by these changes, which boost inter-app productivity. Here’s how to take advantage of the different flavors of multitasking in iPadOS.
The iPad has an amazing split-screen mode. It’s called Split View, and it lets you use two apps side-by-side. On certain iPads, you can even float a third app over the top. Split View lets you drag and drop text, pictures, links and almost anything else between apps, just like on a Mac or PC. It’s also super-easy to use. Let’s see how.
The post-PC world is closer than we think, according to the latest Apple video ad that was published on the company’s YouTube today.
The whimsical new ad for the iPad Pro follows a young girl around town as she video chats with friends, takes photos, does homework, draws with Apple Pencil, reads comics and more all from her iPad Pro.
Check it out:
iOS 11’s biggest new feature, for iPad users at least, is drag-and-drop support, which goes way beyond just letting you drag a file or snippet of text between apps. I’ve been using iOS 11 since the first beta last summer, and while drag-and-drop was neat, it didn’t really come into its own until third-party apps started supporting it.
Two things have surprised me. One: How useful drag-and-drop is inside a single app (which works on iPhone, too). And two: How bad drag-and-drop is for certain tasks.
Updated 27 June, 2017: This post now includes details about the iOS 11 public beta.
Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote this June was so packed that even two-and-a-half hours didn’t seem like enough time. And yet the biggest announcement wasn’t new hardware, or a new app. It was an update.
Specifically, the iOS 11 update for the iPad, which turns Apple’s tablet from little more than a big iPhone into a full-featured touchscreen PC. In one go, Apple showed that it is still full-steam behind the iPad, and that a desktop-class touchscreen computer doesn’t have to actually run a desktop OS, like Microsoft’s Surface.
I could be the poster boy for Apple’s “iPad problem.”
That problem, in a nutshell, is this: Even long-in-the-tooth iPads several generations old continue to work just fine for many everyday tasks. That, in turn, slows the upgrade cycle. iPad sales drop, and pundits pile on to declare that Apple is doomed. Again.
I’m one of those cheapskates who couldn’t be bothered to shell out for a new iPad over the past few years but a freak accident — and the surprisingly convincing unveiling of the 10.5-inch iPad Pro at last week’s Worldwide Developers Conference — finally coaxed me out of iPad complacency.
I’m thrilled I finally wised up. The new 10.5-inch iPad Pro is a beast of a machine that’s so fast, smooth and responsive that it makes me feel like I’m in a sci-fi movie interacting with a killer device that hasn’t been invented yet. It feels like the future!
This is either bad news for your workload or great news for your procrastination, but as of today, YouTube’s iOS app has full support for two of the iPad’s multitasking features.
Now, you can run the video app alongside other, probably more useful things. You can even control YouTube while you’re working on other stuff without having to close either program. It’s a brilliant way to not get anything done, ever.
Here’s how it works.
An update to HBO Go is a direct assault on your productivity.
The streaming service just added two new features that are sure to send you spiraling into a “just one more” death spin. The new features are Picture-in-Picture (for compatible devices running iOS 9) and autoplay, which is how you sit down to watch a single episode and then look up later to discover the sun has come up, and now you have to go to work.
iOS 9 won’t shock you with a bunch of whiz-bang new features or a drastic new look, but in many ways, Apple’s latest mobile operating system is more important than its two immediate predecessors. While iOS 7 and iOS 8 laid a foundation that embraced the future of mobile design, iOS 9 is making all those changes worth a damn.
Apple drops iOS 9 today, bringing a more intelligent UI, better built-in apps, a smarter Siri and much more. Our iOS 9 review shows how the new software makes everything you do on your iPhone or iPad easier — and far faster — than ever before.
Our digital lives are busy. We send iMessages while we’re browsing the web, type in phone numbers and addresses while FaceTiming, and bounce between apps on our Macs constantly.
Now, with iOS 9 and a modern iPad, you can quickly browse the web, respond to a text message, or jot something down in a note, then slide that app away so you can focus on your original app.
This feature, called Slide Over, is going to make using your iPad a lot more fun and useful.
Here’s how to make it happen, assuming you have an iPad Air, iPad Air 2, iPad mini 2, or iPad mini 3.
When iOS 9 rolls out to the public this fall, it’ll be iPad users that appreciate it most, thanks to the many improvements Apple has made to multitasking. One of the biggest is Split View, a feature that’s exclusive to the iPad Air 2, which lets you run two apps side-by-side — just like you would on your Mac.
Split View lets you read articles in Safari while composing an email in Mail, enjoy a novel in iBooks while taking notes in the Notes app, and talk to friends via iMessage while organizing your schedule in Calendar.
But is Split View as game-changing as it looks at first glance? You bet it is.
Apple’s giant iPad has been one of the rumor mill’s favorite products to gossip about for years, even though no one has seen so much as a chamfered edge of its supposed 12-inch display. However, some assets hidden inside iOS 9 indicate that the new tablet — often referred to as the “iPad Pro” — could make an appearance soon.
According to a developer who’s been digging through iOS 9, the new keyboard scales to a much larger screen size than we’ve seen so far. When the new keyboard is enlarged, it adds an extra row of keys, hinting that Apple’s monstrous new tablet could rear its head in the near future.
Check it out: