Apple has officially given iPadOS 16 a release date. Alongside the announcement of new iPad Pro hardware today, Apple revealed that iPadOS 16.1 will be released for all iPad users on October 24. iPadOS 16 includes a number of changes for iPad users, headlined by the controversial new Stage Manager multitasking feature.
iPadOS 16.1: New features and devices
In most years, the major “fall” release of iPadOS is available alongside the corresponding iOS update. This year, however, Apple delayed iPadOS 16 to October and released iOS 16 in September as originally scheduled. This means that next week’s release of iPadOS 16.1 is the first version of iPadOS 16 made available to the general public.
iPadOS 16 includes a number of changes to the iPad experience, but most notable is the new Stage Manager multitasking feature. This feature brings an all-new windowing system to the iPad. Users can create multiple different “stages” with different sized windows for multiple applications, then easily switch between each of those stages.
When first announced, Apple said Stage Manager would only be available on M1 iPads, including the most recent iPad Air and iPad Pro. A few weeks ago, however, the company backtracked and said that the iPad Pro models from 2018 and 2020 would also be able to use Stage Manager.
In a future release of iPadOS 16, Stage Manager will also add proper external monitor support to the iPad. This feature, however, will be limited only to the M1 (and now M2) iPad Pro models.
Other new features in iPadOS 16:
- Messages app updates: Editing, undo send, mark as unread, and more
- Mail app updates: Undo send, rich links, scheduled send, and more
- Display scaling: A new display scaling setting increases the pixel density of the display so you can view more in your apps
- Weather app on iPad
- All-new Home app
- “Desktop-Class Apps” with customizble toolbars, new context menus, find and replace, multiselect context menus, and more.
iPadOS 16.1 will be released on October 24. It will be available to all iPad Pro models, the iPad Air 3rd generation and later, the iPad 5 and later, and the iPad mini 5 and later. It will come preinstalled on the new M2 iPad Pro models.
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