Apple has just unveiled the new iPad productivity features with the latest iPadOS 15. With this, the iPad gets more intuitive multitasking, a new Home Screen design with integrated widgets, the App Library, systemwide note-taking with Quick Note, SharePlay, a redesigned Safari experience, and other new tools.
Here are the new features of the iPadOS 15:
• Multitasking and Keyboard Shortcuts – A new multitasking menu appears at the top of apps, enabling users to go into Split View or Slide Over with just a tap. In addition, users now have quick access to the Home Screen when using Split View. The external keyboard gets all-new keyboard shortcuts and a redesign of the menu bar. Users can also quickly set up and switch between Split View and Slide Over with new shortcuts for multitasking from the keyboard.
• SharePlay in FaceTime – iPadOS 15 also introduces SharePlay for FaceTime. It enables users to access new ways to manage notifications and brings more intelligence to photos and search to access information quickly. They can watch together, listen together, and share their screen. It also supports other new features such as grid view, portrait mode, mic modes, as well as FaceTime links for scheduling and sharing FaceTime calls. In addition, FaceTime calls also go beyond Apple devices with the ability to create a link from iPhone, iPad, or Mac, and share it through Messages, Calendar, Mail, or third-party apps, allowing anyone to join a FaceTime call from their web browser on Android and Windows devices.
• Messages and Memoji – The links, images, and other content shared with you in Messages are featured in a new Shared with You section in the corresponding app. Shared with You is built into Photos, Safari, Apple News, Apple Music, Apple Podcasts, and the Apple TV app. It also features new Memoji with added accessibility customization, including cochlear implants, oxygen tubes, and soft helmets. Moreover, multiple photos in Messages now appear as a collage or a stack of images that users can swipe through.
• Redesigned Notifications – Notifications have a new look, including contact photos and larger app icons to make them easier to identify. On the other hand, the Notifications Summary is intelligently ordered by priority, with the most relevant notifications at the top.
• Widgets and the App Library – Users may now place widgets among apps on Home Screen pages, giving more information at a glance and offering a more personalized experience. iPadOS 15 also brings all-new widgets for App Store, Find My, Game Center, Mail, and Contacts. Also coming to iPad is the App Library, which automatically organizing apps into categories like Productivity, Games, and Recently Added, and allowing users to access all their apps from the Dock.
• Quick Note and Notes – Notes goes systemwide with Quick Note and offers new ways to collaborate and organize, whether typing or writing, with Apple Pencil.
• Focus – Focus is a new feature that filters notifications based on what a user is doing. Users can set their device to help them be in the moment by creating a custom Focus or selecting a suggested one based on their context, like during their work hours or while they’re winding down for bed. Users can also create Home Screen pages with apps and widgets that apply to moments of focus to only display relevant apps.
• Redesigned Safari – Safari gets a new design that makes controls easier to reach. The new tab bar is compact and lightweight, and floats at the bottom of the screen, enabling users to easily swipe between tabs. However, Tab Groups allow users to save tabs and easily access them at any time across iPhone, iPad, or Mac.
• Spotlight – Spotlight now uses intelligence to search photos by location, people, scenes, or objects, and using Live Text, Spotlight can find text and handwriting in photos. Plus, Spotlight now offers web image search and all-new rich results for actors, musicians, TV shows, and movies.
• Translate – The Translate app comes to iPad with new features that make conversations easier and more natural. When using the Translate app, Auto Translate detects when someone is speaking and in which language, so users can converse naturally without tapping a microphone button. Apple revealed that face-to-face view allows two people to sit across from each other with an iPad between them and see translations of the conversation from their own side. Text can now be translated anywhere on iPad by selecting it and tapping Translate, and handwritten text can also be translated. In combination with Live Text, users can even translate text into photos.
• Swift Playgrounds – Apple identified Swift Playgrounds as the best and easiest way to learn how to code. With Swift Playgrounds 4, users have the tools to build iPhone and iPad apps right on their iPad and submit them directly to the App Store, offering new ways for anyone to create apps and share them with the world. Code is immediately reflected in the live preview while building apps, and users can run their apps full screen to test them out. In addition, a new open project format based on Swift packages can open and be edited in Swift Playgrounds for iPad as well as within Xcode on Mac, offering users even more versatility to develop apps across iPad and Mac.
• Universal Control – Universal Control lets users work with a single mouse and keyboard to move between iPad and Mac for a seamless experience, with no setup required. Users can even drag and drop content back and forth between devices — great for sketching a drawing with Apple Pencil on an iPad and placing it into a Keynote slide on Mac.
• Shared with You – works across the system to find the articles, music, TV shows, photos, and more that are shared in Messages conversations, and conveniently surfaces them in apps like Photos, Safari, Apple News, Music, Podcasts, and the Apple TV app, making it easy to access the information in context quickly.
• Photos – According to Apple, the Photos includes the biggest update ever to Memories, with a fresh, new look; an immersive, interactive interface; and integration with Apple Music, which uses on-device intelligence to personalize song suggestions that bring memories to life.
• Maps – The Maps delivers new ways to navigate and explore the world. Users will experience significantly enhanced details in cities for neighborhoods, commercial districts, elevation, and buildings, new road colors and labels, custom-designed landmarks, and a new night-time mode with a moonlit glow.
• Privacy – Privacy is taken to the next level with new protections, transparency features, and controls. Mail Privacy Protection helps stop trackers from snooping on an email, and App Privacy Report provides transparency into how apps share information with other companies.
• Siri – Siri is designed to protect user privacy. With on-device speech recognition, the audio of Siri requests is processed entirely on iPad by default, and performance improves significantly. Siri also adds Announce Notifications on AirPods, the ability for users to share what’s on their screen just by asking, and more.
• iCloud+ – iCloud comes with new premium features, including Hide My Email, expanded HomeKit Secure Video support, and an innovative new internet privacy service, iCloud Private Relay, at no additional cost. Current iCloud subscribers will be upgraded to iCloud+ automatically this fall. All iCloud+ plans can be shared with people in the same Family Sharing group, so everyone can enjoy the new features, storage, and elevated experience that comes with the service.
• New accessibility features – The VoiceOver screen reader now uses on-device intelligence to explore objects within images, enabling users to discover more details about the people, text, table data, and other objects within images. Support for third-party eye-tracking hardware enables users to control iPad using only their eyes. Background sounds play continuously and mix into or duck under other audio and system sounds to mask unwanted environmental or external noise, and help users focus, stay calm, or rest. Sound Actions lets users customize Switch Control to work with mouth sounds. Users can now customize display and text size on an app-by-app basis.
Here’s the list of devices that will support iPadOS 15:
• iPad Pro 12.9-inch (5th generation)
• iPad Pro 11-inch (3rd generation)
• iPad Pro 12.9-inch (4th generation)
• iPad Pro 11-inch (2nd generation)
• iPad Pro 12.9-inch (3rd generation)
• iPad Pro 11-inch (1st generation)
• iPad Pro 12.9-inch (2nd generation)
• iPad Pro 12.9-inch (1st generation)
• iPad Pro 10.5-inch
• iPad Pro 9.7-inch
• iPad (8th generation)
• iPad (7th generation)
• iPad (6th generation)
• iPad (5th generation)
• iPad mini (5th generation)
• iPad mini 4
• iPad Air (4th generation)
• iPad Air (3rd generation)
• iPad Air 2
The developer preview of iPadOS 15 is now available to Apple Developer Program members, and a public beta will be available to iPadOS users next month.
