The best iPadOS yet is a massive upgrade for any iPad

Written by Carrie Marshall

We’ve come a long way since the first iPad in 2010. That one ran iPhone OS 3.2, and critics mocked it as a giant iPhone. They did have a point, but even then Apple was making the iPadOS different from the iPhone one – and with each new release, those differences have become much more significant. iPadOS 16 really blurs the lines between iPads and Macs, especially when it comes to multitasking. iPadOS 16 isn’t trying to turn your iPad into a Mac, though. It’s still very much a mobile operating system that plays to the iPad’s particular strengths; its portability, its touchscreen, and its ability to completely transform into different things based on the app you’re using. This is a very big update. It introduces a brand new way of working with multiple apps, it gives Mail and Messages some brilliant new features, it vastly improves your security when you go online and it makes it easier to share the things you love with the people that matter to you. It can even turn back time to undo embarrassing mistakes in messages or emails.

Over the next few pages we’ll discover all the killer features of iPadOS 16, and we’ll show you how to make the most of them.

Whether you have the standard iPad, an iPad Air or the biggest iPad Pro, this latest OS update will make your iPad more flexible, more fun and more you.

Stage Manager delivers something much closer to the Mac’s multitasking and window system.

Stage Manager and Multitasking changes

One of iPadOS 16’s biggest changes is a little controversial

Stage Manager, the new multi-tasking interface in iPadOS 16, has had a bit of a bumpy ride; it’s been widely criticised by many prominent developers for its many bugs in the iPadOS betas, and it’s been suggested that those bugs are at least part of the reason for the delay in getting iPadOS 16 released. As things stand at the moment Stage Manager is now officially a beta feature, and one of its previously announced benefits – external monitor support – has been temporarily removed. Device compatibility has been changed too; what was originally reserved only for M1 and M2-powered iPads now works on iPad Pros with A12X and A12Z chips.

Stage Manager isn’t on by default; you have to switch it on in the Control Centre. Once you do, your iPad moves into a mode that looks more like the Mac desktop with thumbnails – Apple calls them App Stacks, and they work in a similar way to the tab groups in Safari but for apps instead of open tabs – at the left and the current app in a moveable, resizable window. You can have up to four apps overlapping at once and another four on an external display, and it’s a bit like using macOS on a much smaller screen. We think there will be more significant changes before Stage Manager loses its beta label; it’s one of the most controversial interface changes Apple has made in years.

Don’t worry if you don’t want to use Stage Manager; the familiar Split View and Slide Over options still work perfectly well, and at the moment those are the ones we’re sticking with; as of the final public beta of iPadOS 16 we found Stage Manager was still very buggy and needed a lot more work; its tendency to crash means we’re not planning to use it for serious work just yet.