iPad mini iPad Mini 7 & Stage Manager ?

[GuillaumeB]

Hi all,

For me that's the real question.
Will the iPad mini 7 actually support Stage Manager ?

The A17 pro certainly is as capable as the M1 chip but Apple did not update this page

I can picture myself using the iPad mini quite a lot to replace my iPad Pro M1 but I would need to plug it to my external display from times to times

 

[fnsroot]

The new iPad mini has the same spec description for external monitor (just 4K and 60hz) as the previous mini. Hence, I expect stage manager but no additional monitor support. Unfortunately.

 

[GuillaumeB]

hello,

Can you explain what you mean?

I don't see any iPad mini listed on Apple's support page.
Do you mean the previous generation did have Stage manager working on an external display ?

 

[fnsroot]

No, that’s the issue: the description did not change in comparison to the iPad mini 6. hence, we should expect that there is also no additional support for external monitors.

 

[Ctrlos]

Not on an external display. But the A12Z in the iPad Pro previous got Stage Manager window management.

I'm not sure its much use on the smaller iPad mini display though. Even on an 11" iPad Pro you're still better off just using split view and slide-over for the internal display

 

[JoB4031]

This feature would have kept me with the iPad Mini. I need a 8” device that will connect a second full screen to work on when docked. It looks like Android is my next device upgrade. The larger iPads do more than just mirror the screen, but their form factor is too big to use as a knee board to take notes.

 

[UltimateSyn]

A17 Pro almost certainly doesn't have the requisite display controllers to make this happen on an external display (like M1+ do), and I also doubt they would enable it on the mini's quite-small 8.3" display.

 

[snipr125]

Hi all,

For me that's the real question.
Will the iPad mini 7 actually support Stage Manager ?

The A17 pro certainly is as capable as the M1 chip but Apple did not update this page

I can picture myself using the iPad mini quite a lot to replace my iPad Pro M1 but I would need to plug it to my external display from times to times

You will be able to do screen mirroring on an external display on the Mini 7, but not the full fat stage manager with an extended display. Only iPads with M chips have this feature (and the A12Z iPP). The A17 Pro has got all the power needed for Stage Manager but Apple dont include it for some reason (Probably on purpose to make people buy more expensive iPad Pros / Airs).

 

[Beligerent]

The exclusion of full external monitor support is a deal breaker for me. I love the form factor and woulda traded my m1 iPad pro for it

 

[CharlesShaw]

The exclusion of full external monitor support is a deal breaker for me. I love the form factor and woulda traded my m1 iPad pro for it

I was ready to say me too, but I've not only grown accustomed to FaceID, but also the ideal UI scaling on the 11" screen. When I owned the mini 6 for a few months, I could never get the font sizes to my liking, and had to grab my reading glasses, but I can use the default settings on the 11" without needing to tweak anything or use reading glasses.

 

[xxFoxtail]

The exclusion of full external monitor support is a deal breaker for me. I love the form factor and woulda traded my m1 iPad pro for it

Yep, this would have been an instant buy for me. Oh well.

 

[Boil]

Another reason we need an actual iPad mini Pro variant; Stage Manager with full secondary external display support would make said mini a highly-portable & viable on-demand desktop option...

Come on Tim, give me the folding Apple device I demand...! ;^p

P.S. - I still want a new Mac (Pro) Cube as well...!

 

[d5aqoëp]

Stage Manager is dead. Yet to see a single person who uses it.

 

[sjebleu]

Stage Manager is dead. Yet to see a single person who uses it.

Source: Dude, trust me.

 

[Moukee]

Stage Manager is dead. Yet to see a single person who uses it.

I tried it a couple of times but quickly went back to macOS or a different desktop OS. It's just too limited for me. One might say it'd be great in a pinch where I only had my iPad with me, but you need the iPad, a USB-C dock/display to connect it to with peripherals (keyboard/mouse) attached to said dock. In such an environment, a notebook computer usually isn't that far. I personally never was in a situation where there was a setup for Stage Manager on iPad but no "other" computer.

The other way it's "dead" is that Apple barely seems to care about it anymore. iPadOS 17 included some smaller updates like more resize steps for app windows in Stage Manager, but as far as I can see there's nothing new with Stage Manager under iPadOS 18.

All of that obviously doesn't mean that nobody uses it. If people use it and like it, that's fine. But personally when I thought about the limitations the new mini would have versus my M1 iPad Pro, Stage Manager came to mind and I quickly thought that I never used it outside of just wanting to test it. So Stage Manager support is a non-factor for me personally.

 

[sjebleu]

I tried it a couple of times but quickly went back to macOS or a different desktop OS. It's just too limited for me. One might say it'd be great in a pinch where I only had my iPad with me, but you need the iPad, a USB-C dock/display to connect it to with peripherals (keyboard/mouse) attached to said dock. In such an environment, a notebook computer usually isn't that far. I personally never was in a situation where there was a setup for Stage Manager on iPad but no "other" computer.

The other way it's "dead" is that Apple barely seems to care about it anymore. iPadOS 17 included some smaller updates like more resize steps for app windows in Stage Manager, but as far as I can see there's nothing new with Stage Manager under iPadOS 18.

All of that obviously doesn't mean that nobody uses it. If people use it and like it, that's fine. But personally when I thought about the limitations the new mini would have versus my M1 iPad Pro, Stage Manager came to mind and I quickly thought that I never used it outside of just wanting to test it. So Stage Manager support is a non-factor for me personally.

I’d say there are definitely pros of using Stage Manager. However, from my own experience, the learning curve was a bit steep to make use of it efficiently. Mostly due to learning many hotkeys and figuring out if bugs or not, and other weird behaviors.

In short, it made me simplify my work flow a lot, which is a good thing in general, IMO.

 

[Moukee]

I’d say there are definitely pros of using Stage Manager. However, from my own experience, the learning curve was a bit steep to make use of it efficiently. Mostly due to learning many hotkeys and figuring out if bugs or not, and other weird behaviors.

In short, it made me simplify my work flow a lot, which is a good thing in general, IMO.

I'm not denying that there are plenty of people out there having a use case for it. It's just that every time I might've found it useful I either had access to a "desktop-class" operating system anyway (and then I'd personally rather use that) or didn't have access to an external display with USB-C and peripherals. So it just never came up for me "in the wild".

It'd be great if the iPad mini could support Stage Manager as it wouldn't hurt anyone and nobody has to use it if they don't like it, but it's looking very unlikely that the mini will support it. Apple at least used to say that Stage Manager requires "Virtual Memory Swap" which is apparently only supported on M chips. But then again they added Stage Manager support to the A12Z iPad Pro after the backlash, and that one doesn't support that swap feature either. Which is kind of weird anyway because I doubt the M chips have special hardware that allows for swapping (?). Why wouldn't an A series chip be able to utilize swap memory?

 

[TinaBelcher]

I own an M1 iPad Pro 11-inch and I’m planning on getting the mini 7.
I've been hesitant because of the lack of stage manager, but honestly I’ve probably used it less than 10 times every year. And the reason is, that you’re still forced to interact directly with your iPad attached the the Magic Keyboard, opposed to a MacBook that can stay closed further away while you’re interacting with a different set of keyboard and mouse

 

[gupe]

I recently enabled Stage Manager on my Mini 6 - and it is a game changer for me. Finding out how to enable Stage Manager saved the Mini 6 from being exchanged for an Android tablet.

Being able to keep multiple apps floating and open on the screen at one time is awesome. Then just being able to tap to another cluster of apps is incredible. I haven't explored the external monitor output as much, but from my testing with a Dell Type C dock at my desk at work - everything is functional. External keyboard, trackpad, mouse and monitor all connect up and work with Stage Manager very well.

I find it ridiculous this isn't a feature that can be enabled somewhere in the settings of iPad Mini.

 

[KPOM]

I tried it a couple of times but quickly went back to macOS or a different desktop OS. It's just too limited for me. One might say it'd be great in a pinch where I only had my iPad with me, but you need the iPad, a USB-C dock/display to connect it to with peripherals (keyboard/mouse) attached to said dock. In such an environment, a notebook computer usually isn't that far. I personally never was in a situation where there was a setup for Stage Manager on iPad but no "other" computer.

The other way it's "dead" is that Apple barely seems to care about it anymore. iPadOS 17 included some smaller updates like more resize steps for app windows in Stage Manager, but as far as I can see there's nothing new with Stage Manager under iPadOS 18.

All of that obviously doesn't mean that nobody uses it. If people use it and like it, that's fine. But personally when I thought about the limitations the new mini would have versus my M1 iPad Pro, Stage Manager came to mind and I quickly thought that I never used it outside of just wanting to test it. So Stage Manager support is a non-factor for me personally.

I use Stage Manager every day on my iPad Pro. Note that the iPad mini also does not have an official Apple keyboard, so Apple does not position it as a substitute for a laptop (unlike the iPad Air and iPad Pro). It’s likely a secondary device.

 

[TinaBelcher]

I recently enabled Stage Manager on my Mini 6 - and it is a game changer for me. Finding out how to enable Stage Manager saved the Mini 6 from being exchanged for an Android tablet.

Being able to keep multiple apps floating and open on the screen at one time is awesome. Then just being able to tap to another cluster of apps is incredible. I haven't explored the external monitor output as much, but from my testing with a Dell Type C dock at my desk at work - everything is functional. External keyboard, trackpad, mouse and monitor all connect up and work with Stage Manager very well.

I find it ridiculous this isn't a feature that can be enabled somewhere in the settings of iPad Mini.

It's not possible to use stage manager on an iPad mini, unless you've used a third party app

 

[sparksd]

Stage Manager is dead. Yet to see a single person who uses it.

lol. Hardly. The world is broader than your local vision.

 

[Astuces iOS]

It's not possible to use stage manager on an iPad mini, unless you've used a third party app

You can with tweak or jailbreak... It works fine but I do not recommend to do that...

 

[TinaBelcher]

You can with tweak or jailbreak... It works fine but I do not recommend to do that...

Oh, makes sense now... yeah, I wouldn't dare to do that, especially not with an iPad. Last jailbroken device I had was the iPhone X.

 

[gupe]

It's not possible to use stage manager on an iPad mini, unless you've used a third party app

It's a 3rd party tool named MisakaX. No jailbreak required to enable this. Took 5 minutes to download the 3rd party tool on my desktop computer, fetch the config file from the iPad Mini, edit the config file and then reboot my iPad Mini. It's not some crazy hack or sketch jailbreak - its modifying a file that flags if a iPad has access to Stage Manager or not.

Upon reboot - I have full on Stage Manager. It is a very nice feature to have.