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Apple announces brand new iPadOS: redesigned home screen, multi-window apps, plug in a USB thumb drive, more

Apple has rebranded iOS for the iPad as iPadOS. The homescreen is denser with more icons per page, and you can slide out a permanent widgets column on the left of the screen.

You can now have multiple windows per open application, in split views. There’s also new link previews when long-pressing. The iPad now supports external disk drives and SD cards natively; just plug in and access from the Files app.

iCloud Drive now supports folder sharing, not just files. The new Files app includes column view which resembles macOS.

Directories from attached storage show up in the Files app. For cameras, there’s a way to launch your favorite third-party image editor — like Lightroom — automatically.

Apple is also bringing “desktop-class” browsing to the iPad, with better compatibility for web-apps like Google Docs or Squarespace. iPad Safari is also gaining new keyboard shortcuts and a download manager.

Apple is also adding custom font support to iPadOS. You can download font libraries from the App Store.

There are new three-finger gestures for cut-copy-paste, including a three-finger swipe to undo.

Apple Pencil latency is dropping from 20 milliseconds to 9 milliseconds for even more responsive interactions when using a digital stylus. Markup is integrated system-wide, so you can annotate a screenshot or an entire document. A PencilKit API is available for third-party apps.

There’s a new compact layout keyboard mode for the iPad, which shrinks down the keyboard to only occupy a fraction of the screen space.

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Avatar for Benjamin Mayo Benjamin Mayo

Benjamin develops iOS apps professionally and covers Apple news and rumors for 9to5Mac. Listen to Benjamin, every week, on the Happy Hour podcast. Check out his personal blog. Message Benjamin over email or Twitter.


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