Apple kicked off its annual WWDC developer conference this morning, and the company unveiled iPadOS 16 alongside iOS 16 and macOS 13. As it was previously reported, iPadOS 16 will be a significant update that will revamp how multitasking works on Appleās tablets.
If you’ve used an iPad before, youāll probably agree that multitasking on the iPad remains quite frustrating despite the ability to use two apps side by side. Now that Apple ships its desktop-class M1 chip on its latest iPad Pro and iPad Air models, it was really time for Apple to address the needs of power users with better multitasking features.
Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday ā and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!
"*" indicates required fields
Fortunately, that’s exactly what the company is trying to do with iPadOS 16. This new update will bring the same collaboration features coming to iOS 16 including the new shared iCloud photo library and tab groups in Safari, but that’s not all.
Here are some of the biggest new features coming to iPadOS 16 later this fall:
Live Collaboration: Apple demoed today how apps like Pages, Notes, and Keynote will let iPad users collaborate in real-time on documents, similar to the live collaboration features in Office 365 or Google Workspace. These collaboration features are also coming to iOS and macOS.
New desktop-class features: Apple’s various iPad apps will gain various power-user features, such as the ability to customize toolbars and to change display scaling to see more in apps.
Virtual memory swap: Using local storage, this new feature will bump the maximum amount of memory available for the most demanding iPad apps to 16GB
Stage Manager: This new feature also coming to macOS 13 will let iPad users have up to four overlapping app windows at once, which can be resized at will. Using an external monitor, iPad users will be able to seamlessly switch between 8 overlapping apps and drag and drop content between apps across the two displays.
Freeform app: This new digital canvas will launch later this year on iPadOS, iOS and macOS, and it will also let users collaborate in real-time. Overall, the app looks a lot like Microsoft Whiteboard.
Weather app: Yes, it certainly took a while, but iPadOS 16 is finally getting the native weather app that’s been available on iOS for years, and it will be optimized for the big screen
New Gaming features: iPadOS is getting support for the same Metal 3 API also coming to iOS and macOS. For iPad gamers, a new background download API will make it possible to multitask while games download additional packages in the background.
Stage Manager is definitely the biggest new feature coming with iPadOS 16, and it should finally make iPads much more competent devices for productivity tasks. iPadOS 16 will be available in private beta for developers today, and a public beta will be available next month.