If you position two windows next to each other, and you try to resize them so they’re touching along any of their edges, iPadOS will leave a small gap with a draggable area in between so that you can resize both windows at once, sort of like the way resizing apps in Split View mode used to work. Even while next to each other like this, your active window casts a subtle shadow on the inactive window, making it clear which one is ready to receive input.
Overall the new system tries (and largely succeeds) in striking a balance, allowing users to have freely resizable and overlapping windows while still accounting for the occasional imprecision of finger-based input.
The biggest thing that feels like it needs more work is the transition between portrait and landscape modes, which is elegant and well-considered sometimes and just messy other times. Split your screen into even thirds in landscape modes, and iPadOS will hide the middle one when you flip to portrait mode, splitting the screen halfway between the left and right windows instead.
But other times, windows would be rearranged seemingly at random, with unused space and weird gaps that require you to fuss around and move all your windows around again. In general the multitasking interface seems to assume you’ll be using your tablet mostly one way or the other. Especially with a keyboard attached, you’ll almost always be using landscape modes, rendering the occasionally messy transitions moot. But the rest of the interface does a good enough job balancing traditional windows with the realities of the iPad hardware and iPadOS as a platform, so it’s worth calling out the places where it still feels unpolished.
Of course, it’s possible to recreate the full-screen-split look and feel of Split View using the new system. The added complexity makes it slightly more complicated, but it’s functionally similar (even down to the little “pill” in the space between the app windows that allows both to be resized simultaneously).
Credit:
Andrew Cunningham
I’ll also say that on the 10- and 11-inch iPad hardware, in typical day-to-day use, I do often find myself reverting to the same basic layout I would have used in the Split View and Slide Over days—one messaging-focused app taking up about a quarter of the screen, and Safari or some writing app I’m actively working in taking up the remaining three-quarters of the space. The screens on these devices are small enough that you just can’t fit a huge number of overlapping windows in a useful way; newer iPad Airs and Pros have the “more space” display zoom option, at least, and you’ll want to turn that on if your eyes can handle it to reclaim a tiny bit more usable real estate.
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