How to Use Multitasking in iPadOS 26

Hi, it’s Jacob here. If you’re watching this, you’ve probably just updated your iPad to iPadOS 26. And well, things have changed. Don’t panic, though. In this short video, I’m going to go over all of the new multitasking features and how you can easily get to grips with them.

The new iPadOS 26 update not only changes how the iPad looks with the new Liquid Glass style and buttons, but more importantly, it also changes how it works in some very significant ways. And in my opinion, this is probably the biggest change the iPad has ever had.

For the first time, you can now freely resize, move and position your apps however you like on your screen. So, let’s break that down and I’ll show you what I mean.

Before we get started, we’re just going to check the new multitasking mode is enabled. So, we’ll jump into the Settings app and then we’re going to tap onto Multitasking and Gestures. From here, we’re going to make sure Windowed Apps is selected. But don’t forget, you can also tap onto the Full Screen option here to go back to the classic iPad mode at any time you want. You can simply jump into Settings and switch between the two.

However, with the new Windowed Apps mode enabled, you’re going to notice a little corner toggle in the bottom right-hand corner here. I can simply tap and I can pull that to make the Settings app smaller. In fact, I can make it any size I like. You’ll see that as I do it, the content in the window adapts to whatever size I’ve made. And once it’s a bit smaller, I can see the dock appear at the bottom of my screen.

Let’s tap on another app now from the dock. Just like Safari, you’ll notice that just like normal, Safari has opened in full screen, but I’ve got that little corner toggle again. From here, I can pull in the bottom corner, and now I can move the app around the screen, and I can see both Settings and Safari, and I can position them however I like.

Now, at the moment, the apps overlap each other quite a lot, so there’s no real benefit to having both on the screen. So, the next gesture I want to show you is if you drag the top toolbar of any of these windows, you can move the window around the screen without changing the size. And don’t worry if the dock disappears when you do this. A small flick up from the bottom of your iPad screen will bring both the dock and the home screen back into view, so you can open up any other app or file you want.

You’ll notice the windows you currently have open have gone to the edge of your screen. And these will come back when you open a new app or when you simply tap on one of them off the edge of the screen there.

Okay, hopefully so far so good. Just by dragging the corner handles of the apps, we can make them bigger and smaller, and we can position them wherever we like. We can grab the top toolbar and relocate them on the screen as well. It’s also worth mentioning here that you haven’t just got to use the bottom left-hand corner. You can actually resize apps from any of the four edges or four corners.

Another shortcut that’s good to know is that you can easily jump back into the full-screen mode of any app just by double-tapping on the top toolbar of a window. Immediately it will fill your screen, and now you’re back to using the app just like you did before in full-screen mode. And look, double-tapping works again on that top toolbar to go back to the small window mode you just created. This works on any app and it makes it easy to switch between using a single app and multitasking mode.

Now, while we’re looking at the top toolbars of the apps up there in the top left-hand corner, you’re going to see three coloured dots that I like to call the traffic lights. Tapping on here will enlarge those buttons slightly. And then we can use any of those three buttons to control the window we’re currently using. So, if you tap onto the red one, that’s going to completely close the app – a little bit like if you close it from multitasking mode. The amber light will minimise your app but will keep your place, so when you open it again, you can carry on where you left off. And the green light, well, that will take you between full-screen mode and windowed mode, just like double-tapping the top toolbar does.

Okay, so we’re nearly there. Hopefully, you’re still with me as the next thing I want to share is a shortcut that I find incredibly powerful on my iPad. Before I do that, though, if you’ve learned something new from this video so far, you might like to subscribe to my YouTube channel. There are lots more tips and tricks just like this to help you make the most of the iPad, and I’ve got loads of interesting content planned for iPadOS 26 and beyond. It helps my videos grow and get seen by more people too, so I’d be really grateful if you did think about subscribing.

Okay. Whilst it is useful to position lots of apps all over your screen, a lot of the time I find myself wanting to just have perhaps two or three apps side by side so I can work on a project. We used to have a feature called Split View to do this, but that’s gone in iPadOS 26. And it’s been replaced by something really quite clever.

So, we’re going to press and hold the green traffic light. This time, we’re not just going to tap it. We’re going to press and hold it to open a new Arrange menu. Just like that, I’ve got two rows of options. The first row at the top will apply settings to the app window that I’m currently using. And the bottom set will apply it to all the windows I’ve got open on my iPad at this moment in time.

So, just like this, I can make the Safari window fill the top half of my screen by tapping on the button here. And then, if I open another app like Keynote, I can long-press the green button and have this one fill the bottom half of my screen.

But wait, it’s actually even better than that because we can use the bottom row of icons hiding behind that green traffic light to instantly arrange all of our windows so we can quickly go to work. Look, just like that, I’ve tiled all three windows vertically, just like Split View was before, but this time with three apps. And yes, I can still grab those little handles between the apps to decide which ones I want to be wider or thinner, just like before.

And of course, when I want to focus on a particular app, I can just double-tap on the top toolbar or press the green traffic light once to go back to full-screen mode.

There’s actually one more feature hiding at the top of our screen in iPadOS 26, which I’ll just point out quickly while you’re here. When you’re in an app, when you’re working on something – whether that’s full screen or in windowed mode – if you just gently swipe down from the very, very top of your screen, you’re going to see a brand-new menu bar just like you would do on a Mac laptop or Mac desktop computer.

This toolbar is designed to give you really quick, easy access to all the features of the app you’re currently using. And so, in Safari here, you can see I’ve got options to control my different tabs, to close tabs, to make private tabs. I can go to the history option in the menu and find my recently visited pages. And I can manage my bookmarks as well.

All of these are accessible in Safari anyway, but you have to tap through quite a few different menus and options to find them. But now, with the new menu bar, all you have to do is swipe down from the top and you can quickly and easily navigate the settings that you want.

You’ll also notice there are some keyboard shortcuts next to most of these settings. And if you use your iPad with a keyboard connected, these shortcuts will also work to complete these tasks. The menu bar simply gives you a quick and easy way to find which keyboard shortcut you need.

And what you’re probably going to find is that as more and more apps get updated for iPadOS 26, they’re going to take better use of this menu bar as well. So, right now, the built-in apps on your iPad – the ones made by Apple that you probably use quite often – they’ll have really good menu bar support already, but the other apps that you use that perhaps aren’t made by Apple will hopefully start introducing this over time.

It really is quick if you’ve got a keyboard and mouse connected to the iPad, and it does make it feel so much more like a Mac computer, which is quite nice.

This change will fundamentally alter how you use your iPad, and it will allow you to control your device like you’ve never done before. And I think that’s pretty exciting.

Now, we all know that change can be a little bit scary, and this is certainly a big change in how you use your iPad. You aren’t just opening and closing one app at a time anymore, that’s for sure. But I would really urge you to spend a few minutes playing with these new controls, trying to make some windows smaller and position them on your screen. And I feel fairly confident that before long, you’ll really enjoy using these new tools. It really does change how we can use the iPad. And hopefully, it makes it even more productive for you.

And look, if you’ve made it to the end of this video, then clearly I must be doing something right – you stayed here to watch with me! So, please do subscribe to my YouTube channel down below. There are loads more iPad QuickTips there already, and I’m working on lots more new features of iPadOS 26 that I want to share with you. Things like the new menu bar at the top, some of the new apps, and some really interesting ways we can use files and folders on our device.

So, that’s it for now, but I’ll see you on my channel soon for my next iPad QuickTip.