You can’t do proper work on an iPad! That’s the refrain we’ve all heard from day one, cheerfully obliterated when people started running businesses, writing books and recording entire albums on an Apple tablet.
But even as a long-time iPad fan, I’ll admit there’s been a kernel of truth in the naysaying. Because although there are many amazing iPad apps, the broader interface has long felt like My First PC.
That goes back to the iPad’s origin story – a huge iPhone without the phone part. Such simplicity was great for focus and immersion within a single app. The wheels came off when you were smashing out spreadsheets or making movies and quickly discovered your fancy new tablet couldn’t juggle windows in a manner that even rivalled a 1990s PC. In fact, to start with, the iPad didn’t have windows at all.
Windows of opportunity
The iPad launched as a resolutely full-screen device. Five years later, Split View and Slide Over debuted, Apple presumably recognising that the ‘iPad Pro’ moniker would be absurd for a device that cost as much as a laptop yet didn’t let you use two apps side by side. But after that point, Apple dragged its feet for years regarding external displays. The subtext: if you wanted real multitasking, you should buy a Mac.
Eventually, the company relented on that too, foisting Stage Manager on everyone. Given its simultaneous appearance on Mac and iPad, it may well have been a ploy to rethink iPad and Mac windows alike. The tiny snag: it was terrible. Fortunately, with iPadOS 26, we now have take three for iPad windows. And, indeed, three windowing modes, which you can switch between in Settings > ‘Multitasking & Gestures’ or in Control Centre.
Here’s how they shake out.
Mode 1: Full-Screen Apps (aka ‘retro’ iPad)
This mode lets your iPad party like it’s 2010. One app at a time. Switch between apps with a four-finger swipe (or use the App Switcher, accessed by dragging up from the bottom of the screen). It’s the mode your kids or elderly parents will use. Shortly before the more tech-savvy among them asks where Split View went. And Slide Over. Tsk, Apple. They were the good ones!
Mode 2: Windowed Apps (aka you couldn’t Mac it up)
It’s macOS – on an iPad! Ish. Apps launch in full screen, but can be resized (grab the drag-handle, bottom right), moved and overlapped (drag the top edge). Traffic-light buttons – close, minimise, maximise – are present and correct. Hold them and you get window tiling options. There’s even a menu bar (drag down from the top edge). Blimey.
The iPad also has tricks of its own. Double-tap a window’s top edge to switch between full-screen and its custom position. Or flick it up or down, accordingly. You can also drag-flick a top edge left or right to have the window fill half of the screen, in the closest equivalent to Split View on an iPad you’re going to see unless Apple brings back the original.
Mode 3: Stage Manager (aka why is this still here?)
Stage Manager lives. Like a whiffy zombie. It remains so you can arrange windows across multiple groups in what Apple calls a “focused multitasking experience”, but that I’d describe as a “horrible mess that needs to be hurled into a ravine and covered with a billion tonnes of rock so that it can never emerge again”. A minor difference of opinion, then. However, you’ll need it for external display support. Bah. Still, it helpfully turns on automatically when you connect a display, so that’s something.
Back to the Mac
Windowing isn’t the only bit of macOS welded to iPadOS 26. You can now put folders in the Dock. The Files app is improved, if still lacking. Although in not being renamed Finder, it at least avoids that app’s diabolical icon redesign. Preview has made a comically late appearance. And background process support now means your spendy M4-powered tablet will no longer kill a video render when you have the audacity to check an urgent email.
You might look at this convergence of apps and design across iPad and Mac and reason this means they’re becoming one. Surely, now, we’ll see iPads running Mac apps or Macs with touchscreens?
I’m unconvinced a full merger is on the cards. What Apple has instead done, in one big update I never thought we’d see, is please both camps. Minimalists and beginners still get their clean, streamlined, single-app experience. And power users who’ve been screaming into the void for iPad windows with proper multitasking get that too. Progress.
