Multitasking on iPad gets some polish with iPadOS 15

Announced at WWDC on Monday, iPadOS 15 brings notable new features to the device, such as Quick Note and Live Text, but multitasking remains largely unchanged.

Once Apple announced the new M1 iPad Pro at their "Spring Loaded" event, it seemed like big changes were coming to iPadOS multitasking. Some improvements were put on display during Monday's keynote, but in day-to-day use the functionality is very similar to past iterations.

The majority of multitasking on iPadOS is still accomplished with a side-by-side app setup called Split View. When a user has a full screen app open, they are able to drag a second app from the Dock or Spotlight search to either side of the screen and have both visible simultaneously. From there, users can resize an app to take up one-third of the screen or dismiss it entirely.

In addition to Split View, users can add a third app in Slide Over by swiping from the right edge of the screen. These multitasking features were introduced with iOS 9 and continue to be the only methods of using multiple apps on iPadOS.

With iOS 15, Apple adds a new multitasking menu icon that appears at the top of every app with quick actions to enter Split View or Slide Over. This may help users discover the feature, but doesn't add new functionality. One benefit of this new menu icon is a visual cue of which app is currently "active," which triggers when a user starts typing.

Multitasking menu in iPadOS 15

Aside from the menu icon, Apple introduced a new Shelf feature. This allows an app to have multiple windows open in the background and provides quick access to switch between them. Unfortunately, accessing the Shelf in iPadOS 15 is not intuitive and the keyboard shortcut is not currently listed when holding down the Command key on Magic Keyboard.

Shelf displays and app's active windows

App Library, which debuted in iOS 14 for iPhone has now come to iPadOS. The App Library sits in the Dock and allows users to drag apps into Split View and Slide Over with ease.

During the keynote there was no mention of new APIs to take advantage of the 16GB of RAM on iPad Pro, Files app improvements, or better background audio input / output controls. While the new menu icon and Shelf may help some users discover some features, experienced iPad users won't see much difference in multitasking with iPadOS 15.

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13 Comments

hackintoisier 86 comments · 5 Years

About 3 years ago

I wouldn’t refer to iPadOS 15’s multitasking features as “polish.” It’s still a mess. No windowing support, we’re still limited to two apps on screen in split view mode, external monitor support is still a broken mirrored mess that doesn’t use the aspect ratio of the monitor.

Apple can do so much better than this, I know they can.

Xed 2871 comments · 4 Years

hackintoisier said:

I wouldn’t refer to iPadOS 15’s multitasking features as “polish.” It’s still a mess. No windowing support, we’re still limited to two apps on screen in split view mode, external monitor support is still a broken mirrored mess that doesn’t use the aspect ratio of the monitor.
Apple can do so much better than this, I know they can.

Thank god we don't we don't have to you pointers to constantly resize and drag windows around on a small display.

DAalseth 3033 comments · 6 Years

With iOS 15, Apple adds a new multitasking menu icon that appears at the top of every app with quick actions to enter Split View or Slide Over. This may help users discover the feature, but doesn't add new functionality. One benefit of this new menu icon is a visual cue of which app is currently "active," which triggers when a user starts typing.You seem to be dismissing as window dressing something very significant. Far from just being a way to discover SplitView and SlideOver, these are going to be the primary way users invoke them. The button will be vastly easier and more intuitive than the kludgy drag up from the bottom of the screen and hope that we have now. I was hoping for true windowing on the iPad. But setting that aside, this looks to be a vast improvement over the half baked system we have now. One that might actually make SplitView and SlideOver something I use, rather than just curse at.

There’s a good hands article over at cultofmac. After reading it, I’m VERY excited to try the new system.
https://www.cultofmac.com/744594/hands-on-ipados-15-fixes-a-multitude-of-multitasking-sins/

Xed said:

hackintoisier said:

I wouldn’t refer to iPadOS 15’s multitasking features as “polish.” It’s still a mess. No windowing support, we’re still limited to two apps on screen in split view mode, external monitor support is still a broken mirrored mess that doesn’t use the aspect ratio of the monitor.
Apple can do so much better than this, I know they can.

Thank god we don't we don't have to you pointers to constantly resize and drag windows around on a small display.

I don’t know if you’ve ever used Samsung dex, but it has resizable windows, and while it has its quirks, it’s a much much better multitasking experience than the more powerful iPad, in my view. Others may disagree.

But with dex you have free-form control over the width/height of most windows (some apps have a minimum size beyond which they cannot go below). And it’s easy to use your fingers to resize windows and move them around the screen. When you resize windows, most apps resize in a way where the text doesn’t get too small to read. You can have your web browser to the left, YouTube open in the lower right, have instagram or whatever other app on the screen as well. All this from a Samsung phone hooked up to a usb-c touch screen monitor. You can customize your multitasking layout to your heart’s content. To the extent you haven’t tried Dex, I suggest to use it and compare the experience to iPadOS.

I’m not saying Apple should copy Dex, but there clearly exists a better and more intuitive multitasking implementation on other tablets/phones. Apple is an extremely talented company so I know they can do better than what they’ve given us.

I don’t understand why they put m1 into the iPad only to limit it in the way they have. I guess it’s because Apple caters iPadOS to the minimum specification of iPads, some of which have far inferior processors than the m1 and might be too sluggish with a more multitasking-oriented OS.

[Deleted User] 0 comments · 9 Years

hackintoisier said:

I wouldn’t refer to iPadOS 15’s multitasking features as “polish.” It’s still a mess. No windowing support, we’re still limited to two apps on screen in split view mode, external monitor support is still a broken mirrored mess that doesn’t use the aspect ratio of the monitor.
Apple can do so much better than this, I know they can.

When they announced the latest iPad Pro they made a point of saying it could drive the XDR display. I was really hoping that was foreshadowing of better external monitor support in iPadOs 15. Sadly it wasn't