At WWDC 2025, Apple didn’t just announce iOS 26—they also unveiled iPadOS 26, packed with major upgrades to multitasking, visual design, and AI features.
Visually, iPadOS 26 gets the Liquid Glass treatment, giving UI elements a sleek, translucent look that reacts to the content beneath.
Multitasking gets a big boost in iPadOS 26, with a revamped app window management system. When you open multiple apps, you can now minimise, resize, and tile them effortlessly, and the OS can automatically arrange them with a simple flick.
The update also brings macOS’s Exposé feature to iPad, letting you quickly see all your open windows spread out on one screen.
Stage Manager gets even more powerful too, allowing you to group windows into separate stages, which can be split across internal and external displays.
Another macOS-inspired addition is the menu bar. Apps can now display a full-fledged menu bar at the top, activated by swiping down or moving the mouse pointer up. Developers can customise it, and you’ll even see familiar macOS-style window controls in the corner.
The Mac’s Preview app also makes its way to iPad, letting you view and edit images and PDFs, with Apple Pencil support for annotations.
Background Tasks have been improved, so long-running processes like video exports or large file uploads can appear in Live Activities, making it easy to track progress while working on other things.
The Files app gets a fresh UI too, with a more detailed List view and customizable folders—you can now assign colours, icons, or emojis to make them stand out. Plus, folders can be dragged right onto the dock for quick access.
AI enhancements bring new Apple Intelligence features, like Live Translation in Phone, FaceTime, and Messages, plus smarter Shortcuts for summarising text and generating images.
Other handy additions include the ability to choose different microphones per app (or even per website), Voice Isolation for cleaner audio recordings, and “studio-quality” recording for select AirPods models. Local Capture lets you save high-quality audio and video from video calls for later sharing.
The developer beta is available now, with a public beta coming next month. The final release arrives later this year for a wide range of iPads, including the M4 iPad Pro, M2 iPad Air, and newer models of the standard iPad and iPad mini.