What Is Still Missing From Stage Manager on iPad?
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What Is Still Missing From Stage Manager on iPad?
It’s no secret that I’m very happy with the changes Apple is bringing to Stage Manager in iPadOS 17. As I wrote on MacStories during the week of WWDC, Apple reversed two key design decisions in Stage Manager for iPad this year: in iPadOS 17, you can freely place windows anywhere onscreen (including, and especially, on external displays) and there’s more flexibility in terms of window sizes. These two aspects of Stage Manager were my biggest sources of frustration last year; to see Apple listen to feedback and deliver major improvements a year later is a great sign. And there’s more: in iPadOS 17, you can also Shift-click on any app icon or thumbnail in the dock, strip, or Spotlight results to instantly add it to an existing workspace. Taken all together, these changes have allowed me to resume using Stage Manager full-time on my iPad Pro.
While Apple has addressed the worst aspects of Stage Manager – decisions that did not make it a viable multitasking system for me last year – there are still features that I think Stage Manager for iPadOS needs. In my opinion, these are not critical functionalities (meaning: I can live without them for now); from a long-term perspective, however, they would help in making Stage Manager a more mature, full-featured multitasking environment for power users.