The concepts of multitasking and windowing on iPadOS have changed drastically over the past few years. iPadOS 26 was another big swing at a multitasking and windowing model that fits a touch-based computer. In reality, multitasking is both more and less complicated than it was before, so with the updates we’ve seen in iPadOS 26.1 and 26.2, I thought it’d be a good opportunity to update the multitasking guide I put together a couple of years ago.

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Supported iPads

This guide applies to any iPad that can run iPadOS 26. Those iPads are:

iPad Pro

• iPad Pro 11-inch (1st generation and later)
• iPad Pro 12.9-inch (3rd generation and later)
• iPad Pro (M4 and newer)

iPad Air

• iPad Air (3rd generation and later)
• iPad Air (M2 and newer)

iPad Mini

• iPad mini (5th generation and later)
• iPad mini (A17 Pro and newer)

iPad

• iPad (8th generation and later)
• iPad (A16 and newer)

Multitasking Modes

Instead of two different windowing options that were restricted to high end iPads in iPadOS 18, all iPads now have three multitasking options to choose from.

Full Screen Apps

I like to think of Full Screen Apps as “classic iPad mode” or “super focused mode.” Every time you open an app, it opens in full screen by itself. When you’re done with it or want to switch to a different app, you swipe home. It’s very simple and closest to the way the iPad has traditionally handled apps. It’s much simpler than in iPadOS 18 because you no longer have access to Split View or Slide Over in this mode.

Some people will tell you this mode is crippled or meant for kids or the elderly, and sure, it’s great for those audiences. But I don’t see this as a “lesser than” mode at all. One of the great strengths of the iPad over a traditional laptop is that, at its core, it’s really a one-app-at-a-time experience. In a world where we are constantly being bombarded by notifications and alerts, this kind of focus really isn’t a bad thing.

This mode maintains the simplicity the iPad was intended to have from the beginning. Some of us get so caught up in whether or not the iPad should become a Mac (it shouldn’t) that we forget that, for many users, the iPad is a single-purpose machine. Maybe you just use your iPad for reading, watching movies, reading sheet music, or creating art. There’s a good chance this type of user isn’t interested in iPad multitasking at all.

I’d argue this is the mode most iPad users should stick with.

This simpler mode does hold its own secrets though….

The Shelf

Even in Full Screen Apps mode, you actually still have access to a form of windowing. Which brings us to an oft-forgotten iPadOS feature called the Shelf.

The Shelf is a carousel of windows you may see along the bottom of the screen when you open an app. You can also access the Shelf by tapping on the currently open app’s icon. You’ll only see the Shelf in apps that support multiple windows, like Safari.

The Shelf gives you a way to manage your open app windows, either by tapping the plus button to add a new window for that app or by closing a window with a swipe—just like dismissing an app in the app switcher on your iPhone.

Corner shortcuts

Interestingly, there are some little known iPadOS features that are now only accessible when using Full Screen Apps mode.

Swiping in from the bottom right corner of the display invokes the Quick Note feature in iPadOS. This is a special floating window you can use to jot down information and then dismiss when you’re done. The Quick Note window floats on top of everything else on your screen.

Swiping in from the bottom left corner of the display takes a screenshot and brings you to the screenshot UI.

You can change the bottom corner behavior in Settings -> Multitasking & Gestures -> Swipe Finger from Corner. This option, of course, is only available in Full Screen apps mode.

Windowed Apps

Windowed Apps is the other option is the second option presented to you when upgrading to iPadOS 26, and it’s the mode that behaves the most like a traditional laptop operating system such as Windows or macOS.

Before diving in, there’s an important point I want to make many people miss about Windowed Apps mode: windowing is almost entirely optional.

By default, apps still open in full screen just like you’re used to. If you never resize an app, it will stay full screen. I’ve seen claims that Windowed Apps mode is a mess, but it really doesn’t have to be. On my 11-inch iPad Pro, the only time I resize windows is when I’m using the Magic Keyboard.

So why even bother enabling this mode? Two reasons:

1. iPhone apps – The iPad has always been able to run iPhone apps in something of a compatibility mode. It was never very good, and that was likely intentional (or at least seemed that way). The theory was that Apple was trying to shame developers into making proper iPad versions of their apps. For a while, it seemed to be working. I’d argue that one reason we enjoy such a strong ecosystem of iPad-optimized apps today is because this mode was so bad.
   
   In iPadOS 26, when using Windowed Apps or Stage Manager, iPhone apps appear in floating, iPhone-sized windows, just as you’d expect. They don’t really resize, but you can make them a bit smaller, which is what I usually do.
   
   For me, this means I don’t have to reach for my phone for every little thing. I can install iPhone-only apps like Ember for my coffee mug or DoorDash for the occasional splurge, and use them on my iPad without the experience being completely terrible. Truth be told, it makes the iPad feel more like an iPhone replacement than Apple may have ever intended.
   
2. Split View and Slide Over – If you’re an iPad user who relied on the previous multitasking features like Split View and Slide Over, this is the best way to regain access to them, which we’ll talk about in more detail later.

Getting Started

Getting started with Windowed Apps on iPad is pretty straightforward. In the bottom-right corner of every app, you’ll see a grab handle you can drag with either your finger or a mouse to resize the window.

Once the app is in a window, you can grab any corner to resize it, but the bottom-right handle is always the best place to start.

If you try to resize an app and nothing happens, or its locked to an iPad aspect ratio, that means the developer hasn’t enabled resizing for their app. Historically, apps could declare that they are required to be full screen, as a way to opt out of multitasking. Starting with iPadOS 26, Apple is beginning the process of removing this workaround. Hopefully, this leads to more apps adopting proper resizing behavior.

Window Controls

In the top-left corner of an app window, you’ll see the familiar traffic-light buttons from macOS. Tapping on them expands them they are easier to touch. They work as follows:

• Red button – Closes the app. This removes it from the App Switcher and resets its state.
• Yellow button – Hides the app. The app remains active in the App Switcher, and reopening it restores its previous size and position.
• Green button – Maximizes the window. If it’s already maximized, it returns the window to its previous size.

Note: You can also double-tap the top of a window to toggle it between full screen and windowed sizes.

Window Tiling

If you tap and hold the traffic-light buttons, you’ll see options for window tiling. This lets you automatically arrange windows into predefined layouts. In iPadOS 26, you can tile windows in splits, thirds, or four-corner layouts.

Screen Rotation

A nice feature of the new windowing system is that window configurations are remembered per orientation. One way I use this is with Safari: in landscape, I prefer to have Safari in a window, but in portrait, I like it full screen for that classic iPad reading experience.. Once set up, simply rotating the iPad switches between layouts automatically.

Split View

Split View is an iPad multitasking feature that was part of Apple’s first attempt at iPad multitasking with iOS 9 in 2015. It lets you place two apps side by side on the screen at the same time.

There are several ways to enter Split View:

1. Flicking – A flick gesture to either side of the display places the app into a half-screen split.
   Note: This does not work in portrait orientation.
   
2. Traffic-light buttons – Tap and hold the traffic-light buttons and choose a tiling option to dock the app to either side. Unlike older versions of Split View, this method creates a true 50/50 split even in portrait orientation.
   
3. Drag and drop from the Dock – Drag an app from the Dock to either side of the screen to create a 50% split, either alongside another app or by itself.
   
4. Drag and drop from Spotlight (with a keyboard) – Press Command-Space to open Spotlight, search for an app, then drag it into position on either side of the display.
   
5. Shortcuts app – If you are a user of Apple’s Shortcuts app, you can build a custom shortcut using the built-in “Split Screen Apps” action. You can then add it to your Home Screen for one-tap access to launching frequently used apps in Split View.

Slide Over

Another multitasking feature dating back to iOS 9 is Slide Over. Slide Over gives you quick access to a secondary app in a small, floating window that sits on top of all other windows. When you’re done, you can swipe it away just as easily.

Slide Over was absent from the initial release of iPadOS 26 but was reimagined and reinstated with iPadOS 26.1. In this updated version there can only ever be one app/window in Slide Over. You can no longer have a carousel of Slide Over apps (and that is kind of a bummer).

A key detail in the iPadOS 26 implementation of Slide Over is that any app, regardless of whether it resizes, can be placed into Slide Over. A good example is Apple’s Final Cut Pro, which at the time of this writing, still doesn’t support Slide Over or Split View. This essentially removes the ambiguity that existed in previous multitasking system, where you never knew if an app supported Slide Over or not.

One important limitation for Stage Manager users (which we’ll get to in a minute): whatever app you have in Slide Over persists across all Stages. You can’t have a different Slide Over app per Stage, though that is an interesting idea.

You can enter Slide Over in a few ways:

1. Traffic-light buttons – Tap and hold the traffic-light buttons and select “Enter Slide Over.” This replaces any existing Slide Over app.
2. Drag and drop from the Dock – Drag an app from the Dock to the left or right edge of the screen until a small arrow appears, then drop it.
3. Drag and drop from Spotlight (with a keyboard) – Open Spotlight with Command-Space, then drag an app to the edge of the screen until the Slide Over indicator appears.

Managing Windows

Over time, you will likely find yourself accumulating a number of windows. iPadOS gives you a couple of features to help manage them.

If you tap on the app’s icon in the Dock (tap twice if the app isn’t the foreground app), you’ll enter App Expośe. This shows you all of the open windows for the current app. You can tap on one to bring it forward.

You can also tap and hold on an app icon in the Dock to view its open windows at the top of the context menu.

Keyboard Shortcuts and the Menu Bar

iPadOS 26 introduced an app specific menu bar for exposing app functionality and custom keyboard shortcuts. Under the Window menu, you’ll find shortcuts for helping you manage your windows. Some important shortcuts to note:

• Command-Tab: Brings up a macOS-like app switcher. Unlike macOS, however, this task switcher only shows up to 10 app icons.
• Command-H: Returns to the Home Screen.
• Command-M: Minimizes a single app window.

Stage Manager

Stage Manager existed as a multitasking option on M-series iPads prior to iPadOS 26. With the new OS, Stage Manager is now built on top of Windowed Apps.

In iPadOS 26, Stage Manager provides a way to arrange apps and windows into groups, called Stages, that you can quickly switch between. It’s not quite the same as virtual desktops, but it’s close. You can use drag-and-drop from other Stages, the Dock, or Spotlight to get apps to share the same Stage. There is no longer a hard limit on how many apps or windows can be open in a single Stage.

There are a couple of ways to switch between your different Stages. On the left side of the screen, you’ll see up to four Stages you can tap to switch between. If you prefer not to have the Stage Switcher visible all the time, you can enable auto-hiding in Settings → Multitasking → Gestures (with Stage Manager enabled).

You can also perform a horizontal swipe along the bottom of the screen to switch between Stages, the same way you can switch between apps.

Power User Setups

With all this in mind, what’s really powerful about Stage Manager in iPadOS 26 is that it’s built on top of Windowed Apps, which means the things that apply from that multitasking mode also apply here. For example, you can have different app tiling layouts per Stage and combine that with having different layouts per orientation. That’s a lot of flexibility for how you want to lay out your windows.

Quick Switch Via Control Center

One thing that often gets lost in the discussions around iPadOS 26 is that you can freely switch between multitasking modes as needed. This can be done in Settings of course, but there’s also a quick toggle you can add in Control Center. It lets you quickly switch between Windowed Apps and Stage Manager.

For example, if you’re doing something like reading or watching video, Full Screen Apps mode might make the most sense. If you’re doing lighter tasks like responding to email or working on a Pages document , Windowed Apps mode works well. If you’re using your iPad as an iPhone replacement, Windowed Apps combined with iPhone apps is ideal. And for longer work sessions involving multiple projects, Stage Manager can be a great fit.

Conclusion

That flexibility reflects the iPad itself. It’s often called Apple’s most versatile computer, and I think that’s accurate. The iPad offers many ways to work, both in hardware and software. The goal of a guide like this is to help you understand your options so you can find a workflow that makes the most sense for how you want to use your iPad.