Apple brought the first major update to iPadOS 26 by launching iPadOS 26. 1, thereby making amends and bringing new features to the best iPads.
The new features, like a tinted mode for Liquid Glass and new gestures in Apple Music, are shared between iPadOS 26.1 and iOS 26.1, as the two were released at the same time, though there is one main feature for Apple’s tablet lineup.
Source: Apple
For iPad users, the update brings the return of a much-loved iPadOS 18 feature, giving touchscreen-focused users back some of the multitasking power they lost with iPadOS 26. This feature enables the users to quickly access an app in a floating window on the edge of the display which can be swiped away off-screen at will. Until the launch of iPadOS 26, Slide Over was a basic feature of iPadOS for many years.
However, iPadOS 26 also came with largely expanded multitasking capabilities with new free-floating windows and background processing. For some users, it looks like it changed the focus to keyboard, encouraging a lot of offensive posts.
According to Mac Rumours post, you can now access Slide Over by tapping the green full-screen button on the app window and pressing “Enter Slide Over”. It’s really a good thing that Slide Over is back in iPadOS 26. 1.
Apart from removing Slide Over with iPadOS 26, Apple also took out Split View, which through iPadOS 18 allowed users to quickly and easily open two apps side by side, with a slider in the middle of the display, controlling the size of each app. Now users will have to work with the new window system, dragging apps around and holding the full-screen button to access different app layouts. The company really needs to maintain good features, especially for those who use their tablet touchscreen to work.
