From the course: iOS 15 and iPadOS: iPhone and iPad Essential Training

Split a single app in iPadOS

From the course: iOS 15 and iPadOS: iPhone and iPad Essential Training

Start my 1-month free trial Buy for my team

Split a single app in iPadOS

“

- In iPad OS, not only can you split the screen between two separate apps, but you can also split the same app so that two instances of it appear next to each other, or you can have each instance paired with other separate apps, meaning for example, you could have a web page open in Safari along with the Mail app next to it so you can compose an email while referring to a website. But you could also have another instance of Safari open to an entirely different webpage while you have the notes app next to it. And you can even split your screen between two instances of the same app. Let's take a look at how this works. I'm going to open up the Maps app. Let's bring up San Francisco, and let's say that I also want to look at New York City. To open up another instance of maps, I just do a short swipe up from the bottom of the screen to bring up the dock and I tap the Maps icon. From here, I tap the plus button, which opens up another instance of maps, and here I can search for New York. So right now we have two instances of maps open, and I can switch between them by tapping its icon and choosing the one I want to look at. If I wanted, I could open up a third instance of maps or a fourth, and so on. I'll open up one more, and we'll search for Denver. And now we have three instances of maps open. But what if I want to look at both San Francisco and New York simultaneously? Now, as we previously covered, you can go into split-screen mode by dragging the Maps icon to let's say the right side of the screen. I'm just going to tap cancel here so we can see the maps. So now we're in split-screen view. Now because I have other maps open, I can tap the three dot button at the top of the screen and choose which one of these maps I want to view from the shelf down here. So now I've switched to New York. So now I have two instances of the Maps app running side by side, and I can run them both independently. And again, this works with other apps too. If I wanted to have Microsoft Word side-by-side with my Denver app, I just drag the Word icon to the right side of the screen. And if I wanted to have Safari open next to the San Francisco map, I just need to switch to the San Francisco map and then drag the Safari icon to the right side of the screen. And then I can switch between both split views by tapping the map icon in the dock to bring up the shelf and choosing the split view that I want to look at. So this can be really useful for multitasking. Just bear in mind that not every app supports multiple instances. For example, you can't have multiple instances of the Photos app open, but most likely many more apps will support this ability in the future.

Contents