Switching Apps

[junebug1]

When using Full Screen Apps you can swipe between apps on the bottom of the screen or using the three finger gesture on the Magic Keyboard. When using Windowed Apps there is no way to swipe between apps. I see the option to turn on the gesture, but neither that nor swiping the bottom of the screen works. Is it just me, is it broken, or is this the way Windowed Apps is supposed to work?

 

[coffeeplease]

Not working here either. It might be a bug.

 

[Gregintosh]

I can’t seem to swipe at the bottom to change apps even when they are full screen. Is this a bug or did they change this feature? Wonder what I’m missing.

 

[mcru21]

I can’t seem to swipe at the bottom to change apps even when they are full screen. Is this a bug or did they change this feature? Wonder what I’m missing.

I watched a 9to5mac video about the beta and they mentioned that this is intended behavior

 

[ajasso21]

My iPad keeps freezing when I am using PIP then open messages. Have to do a soft reset every time just to get it responsive again.

 

[gsmornot]

I was looking for this same thing. I use this gesture on a regular basis. Now having to close an app and open another is less ideal. I can live with it but do miss swiping on my trackpad to jump back and forth between apps. Guess I will learn to resize the windows and put both on the screen at the same time.

 

[Saturn1217]

The windowing mode needs the concept of virtual spaces. That would allow it to live more seamlessly alongside full screen apps which are much more important on an iPad than on a mac. On a mac we accomplish this with mission control. Apple needs to bring this to iPad OS and then give us back the swipe at bottom gesture to switch between virtual desktops and full screen apps. Stage manager on iPad OS 26 gets close to this but still has no bottom swipe gesture.

 

[Neonblue]

Switched back to full screen apps for now, have realised swiping between apps is probably my most used gesture on the iPad I’m finding difficulty not having.

 

[gnomeisland]

The windowing mode needs the concept of virtual spaces. That would allow it to live more seamlessly alongside full screen apps which are much more important on an iPad than on a mac. On a mac we accomplish this with mission control. Apple needs to bring this to iPad OS and then give us back the swipe at bottom gesture to switch between virtual desktops and full screen apps. Stage manager on iPad OS 26 gets close to this but still has no bottom swipe gesture.

I think that was the idea behind Stage Manager (arguably poorly implemented). I'm disappointed to see in windowing mode the app-switcher mode doesn't preserve the app groupings just the individual app placement.

If you haven't try the new Stage Manager it might be close enough to what you have in mind.

 

[citivolus]

When using Full Screen Apps you can swipe between apps on the bottom of the screen or using the three finger gesture on the Magic Keyboard. When using Windowed Apps there is no way to swipe between apps. I see the option to turn on the gesture, but neither that nor swiping the bottom of the screen works. Is it just me, is it broken, or is this the way Windowed Apps is supposed to work?

This is a known bug as listed in the iPadOS 26 release notes:

• Switching apps by swiping left or right with one finger along the bottom edge, or with four/five fingers anywhere on screen, does not work in the new Windowed App Multitasking mode. (151293681)

 

[DaniTheFox]

If you have a keyboard, you can access the carousel-like feature similar to MacOS by pressing the combination of “cmd” and “Tab.”

 

[Jumpie]

This has been driving me crazy and now after reading multitasking, it seems this is the intended albeit horrible idea.