Apple announced a big software update for iPads at its WWDC 2019 event. The company is now splitting up iOS form a new iPadOS for the has been tweaked to offer a better experience on the big screen.
The iPadOS comes with a new home screen that has widgets alongside app icons. Swipe to the side and you will pull up an app widget. You have Split View to use two apps at the same. You can even see two app windows at a time from the same app.
App Exposé also provides a quick view of just the open windows for any app with a simple tap.
Safari for iPadOS is also getting an update to offer desktop-class browsing experience. It also gets a download manager and will come with 30 new keyboard shortcuts.
Apple is also adding fonts to the App Store, so you can use custom fonts in apps. For improved copy and paste experience, iPadOS allows you to use three fingers to pinch to copy and a three-finger spread to paste.
Apple Pencil is also getting better integration into the iPad. Now customers can mark up and send entire webpages, emails or documents on iPad by swiping Apple Pencil from the corner of the screen. The company has also redesigned tool palette for quick access to tools, color palettes, shapes, object eraser, and pixel eraser.
The iPadOS will also include improved Files app. It has a column view look similar to Finder on macOS. Files pp will support SMB file shares natively and iCloud Drive also now supports folder sharing. Files app ow also support USB drives and SD cards. So, you can just plug an external stage to iPad and access the files within the Files App.
You will now also be able to use USB Mouse or Apple’s Magic Trackpad with iPad.
Plenty of other features that are coming to iOS 13 are also coming to iPadOS. These features include Dark Mode, custom Fonts, SwiftKey-like slide-and-type, the new Photos powered by machine learning.
The developer preview of iPadOS is available to Apple Developer Program members starting Roda and the public beta program will be available to iPadOS users next month. The iPadOS will be available as a free software update for iPad Air 2 and later, all iPad Pro models, iPad 5th generation and later and iPad mini 4 and later.
