The Files app remains one of the most heavily criticized iPadOS apps. While it will likely never be Finder (and that’s by design), it continues to improve year over year. iPadOS 26 adds features that should be well received by “power users”.

Open With…

You know how traditional operating systems let you change file associations? Now, in the Files app, if you long-press or right-click a file, you’ll see an “Open With” option in the context menu. It clearly shows the default app for that file type and lists other compatible apps that can also open that file type. This is great for those times when you want to open an app in something other than the system default, for whatever reason.

To change the default app for a specific file type, just head over to the Get Info panel. Similar to how it works on macOS, you’ll find the “Always Open With” section where you can easily switch the default app for that file type.

Resizable List View Columns

List view in the Files app gets much more customizable in iPadOS 26. Columns are now resizable by dragging the column divider to your desired width. You can even reorder the columns by long pressing the header and dragging it to a different location.

The columns that are displayed in column view can be toggled on or off by tapping the ellipsis (…) at the end of the column headers row.

Customizable Folders

If you ever wanted to move beyond boring blue folders, the Files app now supports folder customization Tap and hold or right click on a folder to bring up the context menu, and tap on Customize Folder & Tags. You’ll find a color picker which not only colors your a tag you might be creating, but the folder itself.

There’s also the option to add a glyph or emoji to the folder. The provided icons appear to be using Apple’s SF Symbols icon set, which gives you a large amount of potential options. In developer beta 1, there’s no way to filter or search this list, but I feel like this will change before the final release. Tapping on the emoji button brings up the standard emoji picker; however, Genmoji and Memoji do not appear to be supported at this time.

Folders in the Dock

This isn’t really a Files app feature, but the iPadOS dock now supports adding folders for quick access. Similar to macOS, simply drag a folder to the right end of the dock, and the dock expands to make room for it.

By default, folder stacks show up in the “Fan” style. But if you long-press or right-click the folder, you can switch it to a “Grid” layout. Oddly enough, there doesn’t seem to be an option to display just the folder itself in the Dock, unlike how it works on macOS.

One fun improvement over the macOS implementation, is that the if you’re using the “fan” display style for your folder stack, its actually scrollable either with your finger or with a trackpad. This lets you scroll the entire contents of the folder, right from the dock, without having to open the Files app. It’s a legitimately cool little feature.

Conclusion

The Files app continues to get more and more capable with each iPadOS release, even though it will probably never be enough for some. Hopefully Apple can sneak some additional small features in over the summer, like they did with disk formatting during the iPadOS 18 beta season.