With iPadOS 15, your iPad is smarter, more useful, and more fun than ever before

WRITTEN BY CARRIE MARSHALL

WITH iPADOS 15, APPLE has given the world’s best tablet operating system some very significant upgrades. Productivity features that were previously only available on the iPhone are now on your tablet too, and you’ll find that everything from productivity apps to privacy protections have been given important improvements.

iPadOS 15 is about making your iPad work the way you want it to. Home Screen Widgets can completely customize the information you get, the App Library can make it easier to organize and access your apps, and the improved multitasking features make it easier to work with multiple apps at the same time. Streamlined Notifications are much easier to manage, and the new Focus mode enables you to decide who and what can contact you at different times and places. Ultimately, all of these upgrades make the iPad more user–friendly.

Some of the new features are dramatic, such as the redesigned tabs in Safari, the new Quick Note feature and the ability to set up shared listening and viewing parties in FaceTime. Others are more subtle, such as the privacy improvements in iCloud+, and the ability to customize your memories in Photos. But whether you use your iPad for work, for school, for creating things or for keeping yourself entertained, the improvements here will make you love your iPad even more.

Which devices will work with iPadOS 15?

If you have one of the following iPads, you can run iPadOS 15 — although some features require specific hardware, so for example Live Text in Photos requires an A12 Bionic processor or later.

iPad Pro 12.9–inch (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th generation)

iPad Pro 11–inch (1st, 2nd and 3rd generation)

iPad Pro 10.5–inch

iPad Pro 9.7-inch

iPad (5th, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th generation)

iPad mini (4th, 5th and 6th generation)

iPad Air (2nd, 3rd and 4th generation)

Home screen, Widgets, and App Library

New ways to organize absolutely everything

>> THE LATEST iPADOS introduces a new way to get organized on your tablet, bringing iOS 14 features to the iPad for the first time. Our favorite new feature is widgets, which have made it across from the iPhone. These can sit anywhere on your Home Screen to provide instant access to whatever you like: Calendar events, the weather forecast, your Apple Music playlist, your favorite photos and so on. To add a widget, simply long–press an empty bit of the Home Screen and tap the “+” icon at the top left to see the available options. As you’ll see, there are lots — including Smart Stacks, which change over the course of the day. Smart Stacks will even predict what other widgets you might like and show them at the top of your Stack.

You can reorganize or hide your Home Screen pages by long–pressing a blank area and then tapping the dots that appear at the bottom of the screen.

Widgets can be moved just like app icons, and your apps will move out of the way as you drag a widget around to get it in the perfect place.

The App Library is another iPhone feature made bigger and given a place at the very end of your Dock. It’s a bit like Launcher on the Mac, giving you an easy to navigate place for all your apps to save you swiping on multiple Home Screens. It automatically organizes apps into categories, and you can remove apps from your Home Screen but keep them in the App Library; to do that, touch and hold the app, tap Remove App and then tap Remove From Home Screen.