Full transcript of “The Best Settings for multitasking in iPadOS 26!!”. Click a timestamp to open the video at that moment. Need another video? Use the YouTube transcript generator.
0:00 So, it turns out there are some really important settings to choose from in iPad OS 26, especially when you're attempting to multitask. You've got some new options, you've got some old options, and it seems like you've lost some options that used to be there before. Hey everyone, Tech Dad here. So, multitasking is extremely important to me. If you're new to my channel, you should know that I use my iPad Pro for all my work. I am a project manager by day, so I spend all my time in my lovely cubicle crunching out Word documents, budgets on Excel spreadsheets, and making lovely presentations on PowerPoint. I don't own a Mac or a PC. I do all my work on this iPad Pro right here. And I absolutely love the experience. And now it's getting even better with iPad OS 26. So, I have to do
0:45 things like draft project schedules in Smart Sheet. I have to create agendas in Microsoft Word. I have to do budgets in Microsoft Excel. And it's really important that I can multitask well, pull up multiple windows, put all those things together on one screen, copy and paste from one app to another, and so on. And the multitasking power of iPad OS 26 is absolutely fantastic. But I have learned that if you go into the settings, you can really optimize it for your workflow. So, in this video, I want to talk to you about the must-have settings that you need to take a look at, change, and optimize for your personal workflow. There are lots of great options that are really going to change your experience. I also want to talk to you about the settings with the pointer because now we have a brand new pointer instead of that obnoxious little circle that we used to have and there are some great ways to customize your
1:31 pointer so that you can get more usage out of that. All right, let's jump into it. Okay, so iPad OS 26 offers three different options for managing your Windows and your apps and just multitasking in general. To access these options, you can go to settings and then select multitasking and gestures. Here you have three main options at the top. The first is full screen apps. So let's talk about this option of full screen apps first. So this is sort of the classic mode of iPad where you look at everything full screen one app at a time. This is a great view for most iPad users. This is actually the way most people like it and this mode does that. I also noticed that in this mode you still have the swipe between apps feature. I always use that especially with my trackpad. I love to just swipe
2:16 across with three or four fingers and flip from app to app. Now, in this mode, a lot of people were expecting the other classic features such as slide over or split screen view. And that's not really a thing anymore from what I can tell. You cannot drag an app up from the dock to open up slide over. You can't do split screen view like you used to in this mode. And a lot of people on my channel complaining about that. I don't know Apple, you might have to bring back this slide over option in the classic mode. Okay, so let's talk about the next option, which is the newest option, and that is the windowing mode. And so when you select windowing mode, when you click on an app on your doc, it just opens. And when you click on another app, it also opens. And you can click on as many apps as you want to open new windows, and they just pile on top of each other. Now, if you want more than
3:02 one instance of an app open, let's say you want two Safari browsers open at once, you can drag the app off the dock and open a new instance. And what's pretty cool is you can press and hold on the app on your doc, or you can rightclick and select to show all windows. So that way you don't lose track of how many instances of an app you have open. I really like that. Take advantage of that. Now, once you have your applications open, you can use the three colored dots in the top left corner to get a good layout for your windows. And this is where I think Apple says, "Ah, we didn't need slide over." Because now we have this. And so you can position your windows in all kinds of different ways. You can set them up side by side. You can stack them top to bottom if you want. I really think that's good for portrait view. I like that. or you can stack them three across
3:47 or four different windows at once in each corner. Now, I had somebody on my channel say, "Hey, what's the difference between the red dot and the yellow dot? It seems like minimizing an app and closing an app is the same thing." But it's not. So, if you click that red button, you're actually closing the instance of that app. And when you check to see how many instances of that app is open, you can see you've closed it. It's very similar to what swiping up on an app used to be. When you swipe up on an app, it closes it, right? But minimizing the app literally does minimize it. It keeps that instance open in the background, but it minimizes that window on your screen. So if you want to see all the apps that you have open, you can use expose view. You can swipe up with three or four fingers depending on your settings and see all the apps that are open. And you can see all your previously used apps just like you could
4:34 before. Now, one thing I hate about this mode is you can't swipe between apps anymore like you used to. So, I can't use the three or four finger gestures to swipe from app to app kind of like a book. That is gone. And I am really having trouble adjusting to that because I like the windowing mode for everything else. But I really did enjoy being able to swipe from app to app. So, I don't know. I got to get used to that. Okay. So, now let's talk about the third option in the settings, which is stage manager. And this was the option that was available for multitasking before iPad OS 26. It's been around for a few years. And the developers at Apple really describe this mode as clumping your apps together in groups. That's its specialty. So you have the ability to open multiple windows. And when you do, you have multiple apps on the screen.
5:19 The iPad will remember how you have grouped those apps together and keep them in a group. You can pull apps from the side, which I actually don't really like, but you can do it. Or you can pull apps from the dock and start to build your group. When you use the expose view or the recent apps view, you can see those groups together. A lot of us like a workflow where we can put our apps together and just keep those all together while we work. And I did get used to this as I've been using my iPad as my only computer for a year now. It was nice clumping apps together and I'm also getting used to not having that feature when I work in windowing mode. So, it really comes down to preference. You've got three choices here. They're all pretty good. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. Okay, so that's multitasking. Let's talk about the pointer and the settings options you have for that. So, you can find your
6:06 pointer options by going to settings and going to accessibility and finding pointer control. And in this, I love the new features that they have. So, first of all, you can change the pointer size. That was long overdue. It's so nice that you can actually change the size of the cursor. It's really cool. I like this in particular because I am a project manager. I run a lot of Teams meetings and people need to see my cursor so they can see what I'm talking about when I'm sharing screen. So if I'm walking through a website or a presentation, they can see my cursor. Now you can also increase the contrast. So it starts out pretty translucent, but you can deepen that dark color so you can really see the cursor better. I also like where you can make it so it doesn't disappear on you. So if you're inactive, the cursor will disappear. Well, you can turn that feature off. The next thing you can do is actually put a color around your
6:53 cursor. And I've seen people do this even on Windows computers where they change the color of their cursor so it stands out even more. Again, this is great when you're sharing your screen and you are presenting. So, there are a few different color options, blue, red, and so on. You can play around with those. And you can thicken the border of the color so you can really make it stand out. All right, so those are some of my favorite settings that I think you should play around with when you're messing around with iPad OS 26. These are great new options, especially when you're a multitasker and you're trying to use your iPad as your main computer. They've really come a long way with this. Apple did a great job with this release. I love it so far. It's also been really good with my secondary display. So, I've been using my Apple Studio display and I really love the windowing on iPad OS 26. It's got a
7:38 great flow. It's easy to open lots of windows on my big 27in display. You really need to take advantage of a secondary display when you're using iPad OS 26. You all have asked a ton of questions on my channel and I'm trying to get through those comments. But let me know if you have further questions. You can leave a comment below. I'll try to get to that. That's all I got for you today. If you like this sort of content, please like and subscribe.
