After its WWDC 2025 occasion, Apple described its upcoming iPadOS 26 replace as “the biggest iPadOS release ever.” This doesn’t look like it’s only a self-aggrandizing exaggeration — iPadOS 26 might truly change the way in which we take into consideration the utility of a 15-year-old product that has lengthy felt like an outsized iPhone designed for a cyclops.
The brand new OS brings us multi-tasking instruments, a brand new windowing system, and the Preview app, which can not sound as alluring as “Liquid Glass.” However should you’ve ever tried to have a productive workday through iPad, then this information is extra thrilling than Sabrina Carpenter’s new album announcement (and that’s not simply because her new tune was kinda mid).
Because it stands now, you possibly can solely have two home windows open directly on the iPad, and navigating between the 2 home windows is sort of a nightmare. In case you’re attempting to put in writing an e-mail whereas additionally taking a look at your calendar to substantiate that you just’re giving your co-worker a superb time to name you, you then’ll most likely be toggling the 2 home windows forwards and backwards, struggling to see all the related info. It’s sort of a large number, and a giant cause why I by no means work on my iPad (regardless of having spent over $100 on Logitech’s removable keyboard…)
If I’ve to discuss with any sources in the course of the writing course of — whether or not that be a press launch, interview notes, an e-mail, a analysis paper, or, god forbid, all the above — then I would as nicely simply pull my telephone out as a second tiny display. Let’s simply say, it isn’t essentially the most user-friendly expertise.
With the brand new window controls in iPadOS 26, you possibly can see your entire open home windows directly, then tile them intuitively that can assist you multitask. These window controls are additionally suitable with Stage Supervisor, which helps you to arrange your home windows into particular environments. Because of this, iPadOS is eradicating its older multitasking options, Break up View and Slide Over.
In the meantime, the iPad’s new Preview app makes it attainable to edit and examine PDFs natively, together with options like AutoFill and Apple Pencil compatibility.
Like Mac merchandise, iPad apps will now get a menu bar, which makes it simpler to find particular instructions or options inside an app. Builders even have entry to customizing the menu bar in their very own apps.
And should you usually work with folders, you possibly can pin them to your dock, relatively than navigating by a clunky Recordsdata app.
There’s extra to the brand new OS than these quality-of-life options (which, frankly, might’ve been shipped some time in the past). Given the computing energy of Apple’s silicon chips, iPadOS 26 can carry out high-intensity background duties like exporting a video, permitting you to maintain working whereas ready for the export to finish.
The iPad will change into helpful, particularly, to podcasters, video editors, content material creators, or anybody who works in multimedia. In one other new characteristic — which shouldn’t really feel as novel because it does — you possibly can select a particular audio enter for any app or web site.
Even higher, the iPad is getting an area seize characteristic, which helps you to report your video calls from any conferencing app, then entry audio and video recordsdata afterward.
The iPad might not match a MacBook with regards to total utility. However possibly, hypothetically, your company-issued laptop computer is a 16″ MacBook Professional that weighs virtually 5 kilos and is simply too giant to make use of on an airplane or prepare with out discomfort (please, go forward and play the world’s smallest violin for me). And possibly, maybe, you’ve gotten a job that brings you to a number of conferences yearly, the place you stroll miles a day throughout large conference facilities whereas lugging round a laptop computer to put in writing articles as information breaks.
In that case, the flexibility to tote round an iPad and nonetheless get work carried out goes to be a recreation changer — and a aid for again ache.
