For years, Apple has been developing a complicated system of guessers for multitasking between multiple apps on your iPad. Today, we are going to take a look at those systems, see how they work now, and take a look at what changes may be coming in the future.




https://youtu.be/UaGjjzXoc_Q




Let's start by taking a look at how it works right now by using an example. Let's say you're trying to plan a trip to Peru. You're switching between navigating through all the places you can go in Peru using Maps, researching things to do on TripAdvisor, and deep diving in Safari. Then, you are putting all of your findings into a Keynote presentation. So, you arrange your apps like this.



You start by wanting to put Safari and Keynote in split view. To do this, you open either app. Then, swipe up from the bottom of the screen just a little bit to reveal the dock. This is where you can find the other app you're looking for. But, since I don't see it there, I will instead search the App Library. Once found, I can drag it to either the left or right of Safari, and it will snap into split view. From there, I can slide the bar in the middle of both apps to the left or right to readjust how much space each pane uses.



Now, let's open an app in slide over. To do this, once again, swipe up just a little bit from the bottom of the screen to open the dock, find the app you're looking for, and drop it on the bar between apps. In my case, I'm going to use Maps. This will give you a floating nonresizable window that you can move to either the far left or right of your screen using the dots at the top of the window. To hide the window, slide it all the way to the edge of either side and to get it back, slide in from that respective side. We will take a look at those three dots in more detail later. Another interesting thing about this floating window is the fact that it has its own multitasking menu. So, if I were to drop another app on top of this floating window, it switches to the new app. In my case, I'm dropping in Tripadvisor. If you notice, at the bottom of the floating window there is another home bar. If you swipe up here, you can see all the other apps you have added to slide over and even close them. You can quickly switch between them by swiping left and right on that home bar. Otherwise, you can see the apps you have open with slide over by launching the regular multitasking and looking to the far right.



The last multitasking feature to highlight is pip or picture-in-picture. This feature puts what you are watching in a box that slides into one of the four corners of the screen allowing you to move freely around your iPad with the video still playing. To use this feature, click the picture-in-picture button in the video player. However, some apps that support PIP don't have a dedicated button, so you have to swipe up to close the app while the video is still playing, and it will automatically pop into PIP mode if the app supports it. But, once in PIP, you can click on the video for playback controls or too open and go back to the app into a full-screen video player.



So, now you have four apps on-screen exactly how you like them. But, what if you need to replace an app or rearrange them? One way is by using the three-dot menu at the top of every window, where you can choose to move the app into full screen, split view, or slide over. Another way is by dragging the windows around using those same three dots. The last way is by entering into multitasking by swiping up halfway from the bottom of the screen. Here, you can readjust how they are arranged and even close certain parts of a window by swiping up as usual. If in multitasking and you see an icon of double-stacked windows next to the app name, then that app has more than one window open.