I’ve been using iPadOS multitasking for years now, and it still confuses me. Today I tapped on the “Show All Windows” menu item for Drafts and it showed me 6 different windows. I tapped on each one and they all just showed a blank page waiting for typing. I expected to just see 2 windows, I have no idea why 6 were open. What is this menu item about? How am I opening so many windows and not even aware of it?
You can open multiple versions of the same app on IPad, so in theory you can have 3 different notes open at once.
How all windows shows you all instances of the same app you have open on your ipad.
I would guess you’ve accidentally started 6 new blank notes.
After some experimentation, I figured out what is going on. When I go into split view with Drafts for example. I’m given a choice to use an existing window or create a new one. So in my experiment, I had 4 open Draft windows. I put Drafts in split view next to Safari and choose to create a new window. So when I go to “Show All Windows” I now see 5 draft windows, one of which is in split view with Safari. When I go back to the split view, I “Close” the Drafts window by moving the divider all the way to the right, so I just see Safari. But now when I go to “Show All Windows”, I still see 5 Drafts windows, closing split view didn’t close the Drafts window, it just made it a solo open window. This doesn’t make sense to me. I looked at Apple’s instructions for Split View here:
“To close Split View, drag the app divider over the app that you want to close.”
This leads me to believe that the window would be closed, but that isn’t what actually happens.