FWIW, I got both my phone and iPad Pro on 26 today, and while I have naturally not yet used it a lot, I keep finding myself suprised at the improvements. Everything I’ve tested this far works just as well as it ever did. I like the new look too - feels nice with a fresh coat of paint, esp for the iPad after years of minimal attention.
The most important things for me are:
Files App: so much faster when browsing folders and generating thumbnails. Instant in fact.
Preview! Yay! Such an improvement for small tasks over Photos.
Menu bar seems nice, but require apps to add items to it
Stage Manager with the new windowing finally works in a way that feels intuitive to me
Still annoying:
Why can’t I just point to / select from a folder of fonts? I have a massive collection…
I was dreading the new windowing in iPadOS 26 on my 11” ipad air. But I took your plunge a few days ago and upgraded. So glad I did. It’s still a tablet experience. That’s what I want. But the flexibility of the new window management features are far more useful than expected. The pervious split view was simple and easy. However, I’m quickly adapting and never want to go back.
As far as I can tell, the only way to add fonts / typefaces globally on the iPad, is to buy them from the AppStore. I have a collection of 16.000+ fonts on the Mac, so I can usually find something that fits my use case.
Good thing is that the Affinity apps, where I mostly have a need for different typefaces, DO support loading of standard OTF and TTF font files. They are not available to apps outside of the Affinity suite tho.
On the Mac, there are no issues with installing and using fonts.
I was talking about the iPad. Clumsy workarounds do exist, but they are not practical for more than a very small set of fonts. One way is to add individual fonts as Configuration Profiles under System Settings / Generl / VPN & Device Management.
FontBook and third-party font managers on iPad are long overdue.
I feel the same way, except for the Stage Manager part: I found that without Stage Manager there was no rhyme or reason as to how apps in window mode would remain grouped: I’d set a bunch of app windows up and then if I would do the “wrong” (no idea what it was) thing, they’d become ungrouped. Stage Manager seems to fix that.
I’m curious if you’ve noticed the same behaviour or if I’m just being dense about how window mode is supposed to work without Stage Manager.
One thing that can happen is this, if you swipe up from the bottom, the windows will push off to the side revealing the Home Screen. This allows you to pick another app to add to the group. But if you swipe up a second time before you pick another app, it resets the overlapping windows. One good thing though, when you open the apps you had open before, they will remember the size and position they last occupied, so it’s easy to recreate. I’ve accidentally done this a few times, so I bet that is what is happening for you too.
Yes, and toggling to full screen and back the windows remember their non full screen position. Also double tapping the window title toggles the window size.
One thing I sorely missed was “swipe up from corner” to take a screen shot. So I turned on the assistive floating touch button - an old friend from years ago - and now a long press takes the screenshot.
No, I still have the traffic lights. If an app is in full screen mode then I get the traffic lights (and menu bar) by moving the cursor to the top of the screen (track pad) or swiping down once from the top of the screen. If an app is in window mode then the traffic lights are there as (the new) normal.
I don’t say this is easy still, it could be better, but for what it is worth you can include multiple fonts in a single configuration profile when you create it with Apple Configurator. I have one installed on my iOS deveices with approximately 40 fonts.
You can have 29 apps in your dock! I didn’t put 29 in there, but I did add a bunch of apps that I use regularly so that will be handy.
I like his demo of the “better” Split View.
I didn’t know the limit for multiple windows is 12. So I tried that and it is definitely enough. One thing I learned messing around with it myself is when you add a 13th window, it will kick out one of your apps. But if you go into expose mode and swipe up on an app to close it, the window that got kicked out will slide back in from the left.
