(Credit: Apple)
Apple is making big changes to how you multitask on your iPad. With its upcoming iPadOS 26 update, Apple is retiring both Split View and Slide Over to make way for a new "powerful and intuitive" multitasking tool that offers similar options.
Apple didn't announce the retirement of the features on stage at WWDC 2025 when it revealed iPadOS 26, but 9to5Mac downloaded the first beta and found the company has removed them in favor of the new windowing system feature.
Split view is pretty self-explanatory; it allows you to view two supported apps at once, with each one taking up the same amount of space on the screen. Slide Over, meanwhile, allows you to have a smaller section of an app slide over the top of a full-screen one. Watch YouTube in full screen, for example, and slide over the X app to scroll as you watch.
This new windowing feature allows users to switch between multiple apps and place them wherever they want on their iPad screen. For example, if you want multiple apps open in small windows, you can now do that, scattering them around your iPad’s screen. All apps can then be minimized, resized, or tiled together.
(Credit: Apple)The company’s Exposé feature is also coming to iPad. It will help you see all your apps at once so you can decide which one to switch to or which app to close down. It works similarly to Mission Control on Mac, where you can press F9 to see all your open apps.
Interestingly, Apple will continue to offer Stage Manager on iPad despite the end of the other two tools. "The new windowing system works great with Stage Manager for those who want to group their windows into distinct stages, and with an external display for those who want even more space to work across their apps," Apple says.
(Credit: Apple)It appears Apple is keeping this feature specifically because of how it works with external displays, which is a relatively new feature for iPads. Some users on Reddit have also found that Stage Manager has come to some of the company's lower-spec iPads for the first time with the beta software. One user confirmed the standard iPad model from 2022 now supports Stage Manager, but it's unclear if it has full external display support.
All of these new features are designed to make iPadOS feel more Mac-like than it has ever before, with all its new OSes getting the "Liquid Glass" makeover.