Intro; In my recent video where I detailed 9 new
features in iPadOS 16, I mentioned Stage Manager, and at the time I explained that it was too
complicated to cover everything in that video, and would need a dedicated video.
Well, here’s that dedicated video.
Stick with me, as I show you everything that Stage Manager can now do on the iPad.
Requirements; Before we get fully into the video, it’s
important to mention that not all iPads will be able to run Stage Manager.
You’ll need either an iPad Air 5th Generation, an iPad Pro 12.9 inch 3rd Generation or later,
or an iPad Pro 11 inch 1st Generation or later.
I’m currently running this on my iPad 11 inch 2nd Generation, and if you’re unsure
of what you’re running, open Settings, then tap on General, then About and look here,
Model Name.
Unfortunately, if you’ve got an iPad that isn’t compatible, this feature will not
be available on your iPad, but keep watching, maybe by the end of this video, you’ll like
the feature enough to consider an upgrade.
What is Stage Manager?; According to Apple, Stage Manager is their
brand new solution for multitasking on the iPad.
If you’ve been an iPad owner for a while, you’ll likely know that multitasking is
the one thing that Apple have really struggled to get to grips with here on the iPad, the
previous multitasking methods have always been a bit clunky, or failed to really make
the most of what is, potentially, quite a small display, especially when compared with
a MacBook or a desktop Mac.
Stage Manager does go some way to making the multitasking experience on the iPad better.
It’s not perfect, but it’s good, albeit kind of confusing at first, so let me walk
you through it.
Getting started; OK, so first up, we need to enable Stage Manager.
To do this, head into Settings, then choose Home Screen & Multitasking, and toggle on
‘Use Stage Manager on iPad’.
Beneath that, we’ve got this Layout section, with two toggle options that aren’t all
that obvious.
I would recommend that you play around with these, and find a setup that works for you.
Recent apps is the strip on the left of the screen that gives you quick access to apps
that you’ve got open, we’ll talk more about that in this video, and the dock is
the dock, just like you’ve always had on your iPad.
Apple don’t really explain how this works especially well in my opinion, but from what
I’ve worked out by using the feature, if you toggle on Recent Apps for example, the
recent apps tab can remain visible while you’ve got other apps open.
If you toggle it off, you can still access the recent apps tab by swiping from right
to left with an app open, but when you then select another app, the tab will disappear.
It works the same with the dock, so it really is a case of you trying them both out, and
seeing what you prefer.
I’m going to leave them toggled on for the rest of this video.
Oh and something else worth doing is ensuring that you can access Stage Manager from Control
Centre.
Go into Settings, then Control Centre, and then scroll down to the More Controls section,
in here there will be a Stage Manager option.
Tapping the little green plus next to that will then move Stage Manager into our Control
Centre, and we can then come out of Settings, open Control Centre, and tap this button to
enable Stage Manager.
When you first enable it, it’s not obvious that you’ve enabled it, as nothing really
happens on the main screen, but once we start opening up apps, you’ll start to see the
change take effect.
So, let’s start by opening up Safari.
You can see that, at first, nothing looks particularly different, but notice this little
icon down in the bottom right corner, at the edge of the display.
This is a feature of Stage Manager, and if I tap and drag here, I can resize this Safari
window.
At it’s most basic, this is how Stage Manager works, I’ve now got an app that takes up
most of the display, enough of it to be fully functional, but I’ve still got full access
to my dock down at the bottom of the screen.
So, let’s also open another app, I’ll tap into the App Gallery and I’m going to
open Podcasts.
See how the Podcasts app has opened in the same space that Safari was just in, but Safari
has switched over to the left of the display?
This over here on the left is known as a thumbnail, and at it’s most basic, I can tap on the
thumbnail for Safari, to swap apps out.
Notice that when I do that, Podcasts moves over to where Safari was.
But if I want, I can use that resize tool to make more changes.
So I could make Safari even smaller, albeit still entirely functional, and then I could
drag podcasts from the thumbnail over here on the left, and drag it onto the screen along
with Safari.
So now I’ve got both Safari and Podcasts open in the same main window, and I can easily
tap to move between the two apps.
Apple are referring to this as a workspace, although I’d have thought they would have
referred to it as a Stage but nevermind, and the idea is that each workspace can be personal
to you, based on how you like to work.
So, perhaps you tend to write in Notes, and you want to use Safari for research at the
same time, you could in theory position Notes to give you enough space to be able to type
out your document, whilst also having visibility of Safari.
But then, where it gets really interesting, is if I then open another app.
So, I’m going to open Calm, and see how the new app opens, while my previous workspace,
which consisted of Safari and Podcasts, gets moved to it’s own thumbnail, together, on
the left of the screen.
So again, at it’s most basic level, I can bounce between the thumbnails, bouncing from
the Calm app which is currently by itself, into the Workspace that I’ve created that
consists of Safari and Podcasts.
Notice that each window has 3 dots up at the top of it.
If you tap and hold on that, you can then use that to drag windows around a little,
and whilst it’s not as fluid as doing so on a Mac, it does allow you a certain degree
of being able to position windows across your workspace.
But if you simply tap on these 3 dots, you’ve got some options.
You can make an app go full screen, which is kind of what we’re used to on the iPad.
Or, you can add another window to the current workspace.
If you tap on this, the open windows in your current workspace will kind of move to the
side, allowing you to either access another app by selecting something from the dock or
from the app gallery down here at the bottom of the screen, or by selecting any of the
apps that you’ve currently got open in other workspaces.
So if I tap on Calm, that app now joins the other two apps that I’ve got in this workspace.
I’m then going to do some positioning, to get this workspace looking how I like it,
using a mixture of the 3 dots menu up at the top to drag windows around, and the little
resize icon in the bottom right for resizing.
But then, let me show you what happens, if I then go to the App Gallery, and open another
app, for the sake of this I’ll open YouTube.
YouTube opens in it’s own workspace, as expected, and the 3 other open apps have now
bounced to a thumbnail over here on the left.
And again, you can bounce between the workspaces, jumping from the one with YouTube, to the
one with 3 apps, and vice versa.
And I guess, this is kind of the point of Stage Manager, you can use it the way that
you’re comfortable with, taking advantage of it as much or as little as you like.
If you want to use it to bounce between open apps very easily, whilst only sacrificing
a small amount of screen real estate, you can.
If you want to create Stages or Workspaces with multiple apps that you like using together
at the same time, and bounce between those, or mix and match with those two functions,
you can.
Or you can of course choose to not use it at all if you’d prefer.
It takes some getting used to, but I actually quite like it, even on my 11 inch iPad Pro,
which is a really small screen all things considered, it does work pretty well.
I’ll probably use it for bouncing between apps more than anything else, but there are
situations where I can see myself using it with multiple apps open in the same workspace.
Finally, if you want to close down a window, tap on the three dots and choose Close window.
If you swipe up from the bottom of the screen and hold for a second, you can see all open
apps and workspaces, and can access one by tapping on it here.
And then, if you have multiple instances of an app open, like multiple Safari windows
for example, tap and hold on the app icon, so down here in the dock for example, and
choose Show All Windows.
You can then of course start closing down windows if you wish.
Oh, and you can make use of this with an external display, although the full capabilities of
that, where you can essentially use your iPad like you would a Macbook, and have your external
display as a fully-fledged external monitor is only available on the iPad Pro with M1
or M2 chip sadly, so not something I can test out at this time, it’s also not available
until later on in the year.
But, when it arrives, if you happen to try it out, drop me a comment and let me know
what you think of it, I’d love to get your opinion of whether the iPad has truly reached
laptop replacement standard with this new update.
So there you go, that’s Stage Manager on the iPad, explained.
It’s a bold change by Apple, and some people are going to absolutely hate it, I think some
people are going to quite like it, and I guess a number of people are going to be totally
disinterested.
Which category do you fit into?
Is this something you’d use?
Drop me a comment and let me know.
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