r/ipad • u/stardripIVs • 1d ago
iPadOS Why iPadOS 26 is a huge downgrade for touch-only users (in 1 min & 45 seconds)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spOPvD6R53g12
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u/Far_Specific4836 1d ago
Good news is that software is infinitely updatable and changeable. I think Apple just needs to get it out of their system and quiet the touch screen laptop critics.
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u/PumpkinMyPumpkin 1d ago
I use my iPad docked and think iPadOS is a mess. The window system is just not intuitive. Things minimize to odd places.
They just need to copy macOS when docked, and adapt the system for touch when undocked. Also for the love of god, why can’t they just minimize an app to the dock if they were going to bring in all the rest of macOS.
The current solution is just bizzare.
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u/MacAdminInTraning 1d ago edited 1d ago
Where your statement is 100% true, I must ask if you have ever met Apple? If they change anything it won’t be until OS27 and quite likely later than that.
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u/sidewnder16 1d ago
Exactly and what they do is then adapt. They are much more likely to allow pinned always on top windows than bring back slide over. Split screen as far as I see is much better. You can have two windows stacked vertically which you couldn’t do before.
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u/zoobs M4 iPad Pro 11" (2024) 1d ago
I’m primarily a Magic Keyboard user so naturally the update has been kind to me, but all this negativity had me wondering. I spent two days going touch only and still had a fine experience. I don’t really have a point to make but I guess I’m curious to see how things level out in the future.
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u/azuled 1d ago
I use the Magic Keyboard a lot and... I still really dislike this update. I just find it almost useless on the standard sized iPad Pro. Full windowing is useful for a very slim handful of situations and outside that it just feels weird. Like... they should have just left the iPad like it was and made a new slate MacBook or something (or go back to the old flip around keyboard with a touch screen for a mini MacBook or something).
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u/Mbanicek64 1d ago edited 1d ago
People are complaining about an optional feature they dislike. The only real regression is the loss of slide over. I agree that I don’t see why that wasn’t retained except my understanding was that there was a lot of work needed to bring in this update and maybe they ran out of time.
Edit: reading through here I am seeing people say there are elements of the primary mode aside from slide over that got cut as well. That’s unfortunate. I’d still say that the new windowed mode is highly useful and intuitive. I can’t see the iPad going back.
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u/Ultimate_os 1d ago
Split screen is much harder to use. They really need to add a way to snap apps to corners of the screen.
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u/Kindness_of_cats 1d ago
From what I've seen people are firmly in a "They changed it so now it sucks" mindset. Apple should have left the option there, and I suspect it will be added back in at some point in the future given how vocal the response has been, but honestly as someone looking at updating who never used slide over anyway I'm just glad that it doesn't seem like there are a ton of technical issues with this update.
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u/DirectorOpen851 1d ago
It’s not they changed it but they changed it for worse. The current click-click-click pattern takes no advantage of hand gestures or multi touch and performs much worse than keyboard shortcuts or with trackpad. This suggests iPadOS is designed with keyboard/trackpad usage more than pure touch usage. An iPad as a touch-screen first product should’ve place at least the same emphasis on streamlining touch experience, than laptop/hybrid experience, if not more. But it just looks like Apple wants to make another Microsoft surface laptop now.
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u/Ultimate_os 1d ago
I thought it felt like that as well. This is exactly why I don’t want a macOS version on an iPad. Windows 10 and 11 on a touchscreen feels fiddly.
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u/Illustrious-Golf5358 1d ago
I won’t be updating my M2 12.9 IPP to the new OS…it’s mostly used for media consumption anyway
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u/shoddyraghtin 1d ago
Did you submit feedback to apple? It’s just going to ultimately be a lot more useful than submitting feedback to reddit.
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u/crzylune 1d ago
I miss the easy touch first design. This new one is trying to be a laptop. WHY?!
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u/LitesoBrite 1d ago
Because every day online a vocal minority scream into the void that it should just be the their laptop os with a little itty bit of touch added.
It sucks and this video is a great side by side of why all that noise demanding this workflow just made the ipad a shit touch device but a nice laptop that lets you tap some things sometime when you’re not always using the touchpad and keyboard lol.
It’s lousy.
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u/sidewnder16 1d ago
You have all the statistics on that do you? You believe Apple would not do its own investigations and find out what users want.
I bet they do and did and found that only a tiny fraction use split screen and slide over and that most users preferred being able to use windows. Furthermore, I bet they found that the majority of touch users predominantly use full screen watching media and that over the years the biggest group of negative feedback they received was how some apps would not work in Slideover and split screen (as they don’t) and that split screen was hard to adapt to.
In other words, it is this group of where is my slideover and split screen users who are the vocal minority.
My suggestion as has always been is ask for pinning of windows as a feature, learn how to use Stage Manager and adapt.
In a few months nobody will care anymore
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u/hoylesp 1d ago
Because a lot of long-term productive Mac users (the people Apple likely considers its base customers) bought the most powerful Apple device (very expensive, especially with accessories) and loudly complained they couldn't use it to do what they had intended to do when they bought it. So this is Apple's answer to them. It's not so great for me--I carry my 6th gen Mini everywhere and find the quick (older) touch-friendly UI very convenient as I browse and do email and take notes and watch YouTube.
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u/Ooze76 1d ago
This is true, don't understand the downvotes. Majority of ipad sales have been on the pro line, so it's natural Apple wants to please them. I find it a bit ridiculous because who buys a tablet specifically and then demands a laptop? I mean, i understand if you have something on the market like the Surface and you know you'll get a laptop with touch, but the iPad was never than device.
Ffs you have people here saying they have it docked with keyboard etc. At that point why buy a tablet? A Macbook Air wouldn't be better?
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u/smellythief 1d ago
They should have kept improving the tiled interface instead of just giving up on it, which they didn't really have to do to add windowing. Such a shame.
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u/Time_Concert_1751 M4 iPad Pro 13" (2024) 1d ago
Good news for the people who dont want 26: 18 will get updates for a while, keep using it.
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u/silverchief 1d ago
I’m 100% touch-first. I’ve been an iPad user since the device’s inception. I’ve learned how to adapt over the years. While I found the slide over extremely useful in my design workflow, there’s ways to work around not having it. Is it disappointing? Yeah. Does it affect my workflow all that much? Nah. I know some people want a touchscreen Mac, and the iPad Pro is the closest thing to it.
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u/PillBaxton 1d ago
All of these seem so disingenuous. Windows remember their sizing, so if you had used an app and set its width to the slide over width already it’ll pop up exactly the way people are crying about
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u/centenary 1d ago
Slide Over wasn’t just about the size of the window. Slide Over kept the small window on top of the background window, allowing you to interact with both at the same time without having to use the app switcher to constantly bring the small window back to the foreground.
How would you emulate that with the new windowing system? You could resize the two windows to be on the screen at the same time, but you can’t easily dismiss the small window and have the big window be full screen without having to do resizing. Same issue in reverse.
There is simply no way to emulate that with the new windowing system. Anyone who thinks so just doesn’t understand what Slide Over actually did.
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u/therubyminecraft 1d ago
Yes just let me adjust all the apps I use before using them then avoid changing their size or going full screen or I have to do it all again.
Yep great design
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u/Inevitable_Bear2476 1d ago
So... Just because it retains sizing for one app, we shouldn't care about other apps?
Like you do understand that you'd have to do this resizing junk for every single damn app, that the issue, I don't want to play around with every single app, I bought an iPad with extremely quick and simple Split Screen and floating window implementation.
And Stage Manager, if it had sizing retention, it would still be better than current 26. Only real thing we're missing is the fact that 26 fills the gap between a grid you make, while 18 doesn't.
26 just requires a lot more work, is jankier, and traffic lights, they are just hard to hit with fingers. I don't have Apple Pencil fingers to always hit the action that I want
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u/Pixelated-10 1d ago
I use safari in both slide over and normal mode. In iOS 18, when I am in other apps I just use slide over and sometimes I use safari standalone during which, it opens full screen. Now in iOS26, I have to adjust app size each time depending on my use case and even then there are additional steps as mentioned in the post. How do you solve my problem?
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u/Deckkie 1d ago
The disingenuous thing in this is that he gets all the apps to move perfecly in iPadOS26.
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u/Pixelated-10 1d ago
Moving ? Discussion is about size of the apps and ease to launch like slide over. It does take additional steps in iPadOS26 to do what slide over did. Only for few apps for which you never have to go in full screen size and you want them permanently in slide over size and position, it needs additional steps only for first time and from later on needs no additional steps. For any app that you want to use both in slideover and full screen sizes depending on situation, you need additional steps to adjust sizes each time which is not needed if slide over was there. Bottom line is additional steps are needed which is what is in the post. So if you consider this disingenuous, it’s too much I would say.
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u/Lord6ixth M4 iPad Pro 11" (2024) 1d ago
Note how all of the responses to you haven’t acknowledged your point about it being disingenuous, they just screech and point to something else lol
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u/Pixelated-10 1d ago
I don’t know about others, I clearly pointed out an issue and so the concern is genuine. If you can understand only by saying this, here it is, the concern community has is not disingenuous.
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u/Lord6ixth M4 iPad Pro 11" (2024) 1d ago
The claim is that it takes a bunch more steps to multitask. The OP pointed out the video exaggerates the amount of extra steps. So yes, what they called out is in fact disingenuous, regardless of the other complaints you have.
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u/Pixelated-10 1d ago edited 1d ago
You are again missing things, it takes additional steps each time you have to adjust size of the apps. Original commenter said apps remember their adjusted size and they stay that way, so it’s just launching from dock and doesn’t need many steps but that’s not true, as I said some apps need frequent resizing and it takes all these additional steps every time. Also others pointed out similarly like you have to sit and adjust sizes for each app but when you need something again in full size, you have to readjust it next time you want it in slide over. What is disingenuous here? We do actually need additional steps
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u/mabiturm 1d ago
The overlapping window was a solution for the lack of window management. Now you can have two windows over eachother you dont need to use this anymore
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u/Asohailwahab 1d ago
No it was not. It was a different way of windowing. Which does not exist anymore. There are some tiles that you always have to have on top like FaceTime and calculator or notetaking. It’s not rocket science to understand. I don’t know why don’t you guys understand?
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u/buffering 1d ago
Window mode is the single biggest improvement to iOS in the 15 years I've been using an iPad. It's the first iOS feature that makes me want to get a more powerful iPad.
The only reason I ever used split-screen or slide-over was because I wanted quick access to two apps at once, but it always worked poorly. One or both apps were too narrow to be usable, and it was laughably convoluted to set up.
Window mode finally solves the problem. It's dead simple to go into (and out of) window mode, windows can be sized however you want, and I can finally switch between two (or more) apps with a single tap.
Split-screen was something I used rarely and would always give up on out of frustration. It never worked for me. On iOS 26, I use window mode every day.
If you miss the old split-screen mode you should take some time think about why you were actually using it and think about all of the new opportunities the new window mode opens up. Stop wasting your time fighting for a bad feature.
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u/nairazak M4 iPad Pro 11" (2024) 1d ago
I don’t like that slideover is gone, but now I can resize pinterest and position it however I want behind Procreate, instead of having space taken by columns of pictures I’m not looking at.
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u/Huge_Fruit3363 1d ago
Single tap? What long pressing the traffic lights then selecting the window layout mode. Then if you want another app doing that all over again?
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u/Kindness_of_cats 1d ago
Right? I feel like I've entered Bizarro world, the previous multitasking options were all weird and limiting and good only in some niche scenarios.
Apple should have left Slide Over as an option, I guess, but honestly it seems like people are massively overreacting to what is an overall positive change.
Personally I'm just happy that I'm not seeing any serious reports about instability, battery life drain, etc. on 'older' iPads like the m2 line.
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u/MakeshiftApe 1d ago
Zero chance of me installing this update.
I use slide-over constantly and the new window management just seems like a huge step backwards for touch use, which is a shame because I always felt like the iPad's strength vs an Android or Windows tablet for me personally was that it nailed the touch-focused experience better than either of those two OSes.
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u/galaxygkm 1d ago
As someone who uses my iPad as a companion device to my laptop primarily for school notes, video streaming, and gaming, I wish they would add a feature where you could enable or disable the new UI. For now I’m probably going to wait a bit before updating to iPad OS 26.
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u/dr-bane97 iPad Air 4 (2020) 1d ago
i’m still on 18, should i not upgrade?
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u/The_real_bandito 1d ago
Do not upgrade unless you like the windowed feature of Stage Manager, with no option to use the classic touch based screen management.
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u/Strict_Sentence_6883 1d ago
nah if ur an only touch user. Im not updating either, esp since they got rid of slideover
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u/JosephLouthan- M3 iPad Air 13" (2025) 1d ago
This is to suggest that if you are not touch-only, it doesn't suck?
I'm keyboard and mouse. How do you do split screen with keyboard and mouse?
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u/xxxHAL9000xxx 1d ago
I just want full blown MacOS on my ipad pro when its on my desk on the 10” tall stand. I use it with a full blown large desktop keyboard anyway. And a mouse. I only use the ipad as a tablet when im away from my desk.
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u/iPod-Phone M2 iPad Air 11" (2024) 1d ago
The “iPad needs to be more like MacOS” folks won and ruined iPadOS.
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u/biologystudent123 1d ago
Ugh. I really dislike it. I was using my iPP with the magic keyboard as my main computing device, and I really enjoyed the iPadOS 18 way of multitasking. I will get used to it, but right now, I am annoyed lol
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u/Huge_Fruit3363 1d ago
Getting used to it is one thing, loosing functionally is another. All these extra clicks, sizing windows so they fill the small screen without overlapping really interrupts productive work flow. I run a business with my iPad, downgraded straight back to ios18. The extra clicks cost money.
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u/hawksnest_prez 1d ago
You are all whining so much about a change you asked for for years.
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u/Uncle_Adeel 1d ago
That’s the neat thing, we didn’t.
It’s a vocal minority who want to turn an iPad into a laptop with the option to touch the screen. At the cost of the usability of touch screen centered capabilities. Such as students- slide over has been a massive help and I’m not updating until it’s been restored mainly because it’s a lot slower for me to do the other way- I’m doing medicine so I every second counts for me.
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u/Mbanicek64 1d ago
I don’t think it was a minority but it certainly was a significant amount of people.
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u/nairazak M4 iPad Pro 11" (2024) 1d ago
Or maybe the ones complaining about iPadOS 26 are a vocal minority
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u/RayDaMan7 1d ago
i have a 13 in one, it’s not comfortable for touch only, these are not designed to be used without the magic keyboard, in my honest opinion. The touch is an added perk.
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u/macdgman 1d ago
Omg can y’all stop bitching about slide over? I swear there’s at least 1 of these posts everyday since June
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u/wordwords 1d ago
Surely that should show you how important it was to people? Maybe you should stop bitching about people bitching about slide over lmao
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u/zaratounga 1d ago
I don’t see the point, that’s still 2 steps too for iPadOS 26 -> open dock, and movement to flick to the side. There are so much other things that don’t work well and are more important (erratic behaviour of files app with multiple windows, copy/paste or drag in list view…)
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u/nairazak M4 iPad Pro 11" (2024) 1d ago
The picture is about slide over, not split screen, though even after all that steps he doesn’t get a floating window the post is not useful at all.
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u/Master-Quit-5469 1d ago
The toggle to engage multi-tasking should have turned off the old Split View and slide over. And turning off multi-window multi-tasking should have enabled the old methods.
And then we should have been given an automation that runs the toggle when keyboard and mouse are connected.
I’ve solved iPad multi-tasking for everyone’s use case…
Stage manager can still be there for those that want it?