La t year, Apple completely reinvented multita king on the iPad, with the introduction of windowing in iPadOS 26. At fir t, thi meant the removal of the impler ver ion of multita king, Split View and Slide Over. Tho e feature did eventually return, but at a co t – they required you to u e the clunky new windowing y tem. I wa hoping iPadOS 27 would improve thi , but it didn’t.
To be clear, I don’t actually have a total oppo ition to the new windowing y tem in iPadOS 26 (and now 27). It ha a time and a place, and when I’m trying to bounce between multiple app at once on my 13-inch iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard, it work exceptionally well. I have mixed feeling about it on maller iPad , but it’ fine.
What I don’t like, however, i the fact that the only other option (other than Stage Manager, which i more of a feature within windowing than a different option) i to u e every ingle app in full creen – with no ort of flexibility.
A mentioned earlier, iPadOS 26 did eventually bring back Split View and Slide Over in later beta – but you can only u e them if you only have windowing turned on. Thi meant that if you wanted the impler ver ion of multita king, you had to deal with all of the layer of complexity meant for pro u er .
It’ certainly fine, but at time it imply get annoying that you have to po ition your window ju t right for it to nap into Split View or Slide Over, wherea it wa much more eamle prior to iPadOS 26. It’ al o a lo for people who love windowing, becau e if you drag your window ever o lightly wrong, it might enter Split View when you don’t want it to.
Apple doe let you long pre the traffic light to get more pecific toggle for managing Split View and Slide Over tate , but thi al o doe n’t feel right for ju t imple iPad u age.
Split View and Slide Over belong on iPadOS for ure, but hoveling them in within windowing make it more complicated than it need to be, even a year later.
Ideally, there’d be two et of multita king option on iPadOS: Cla ic and Pro. Cla ic would largely open app in full creen, but have the option for Slide Over and Split View, and Pro would have the windowing that iPadOS 26 introduced. Within Pro, there’d al o be an option to enable/di able Stage Manager.
It annoy me that lide over ha n’t truly returned. I don’t care for tage manager unle I have the Magic Keyboard ca e or a di play connected to it ( ide note it would be nice if the iPad went into tage manager mode when connected to either). I wonder how the iPhone fold will handle multita king.
Overall, I ju t feel like Apple took the iPad too far in one direction for Magic Keyboard/laptop replacement u er , and the multita king experience i a bit lacking for tho e who ju t want their iPad to be an iPad. Bringing back a “ imple” multita king option would go far in that direction.
How do you feel about iPad multita king ince iPadOS 26? Let u know in the comment .
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Michael i 9to5Mac’ Weekend Editor, keeping up with all of the late t Apple new on Saturday and Sunday. He got tarted in the world of Apple new during the pandemic, and it became a growing hobby. He’ al o an indie iOS developer in hi free time, and ha publi hed numerou app over the year .
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