One of the best features of Stage Manager on the iPad will be making a return in the near future.
When Apple initially announced Stage Manager for the Mac and the iPad at WWDC in June, it showed off how the feature can cleanly organize all of the apps you have running on your Mac’s desktop. For the iPad, it created a desktop-like experience that, prior to the feature’s existence, hadn’t really existed on the device.
In addition to running four apps at the same time on the iPad itself, Apple also showed off that, by hooking up the iPad to an external display, you could run eight apps across both screens. However, when Apple released iPadOS 16 to users on Monday, external display support was missing.
Thankfully, a future version of iPadOS is to the rescue. Earlier today, Apple released the first developer beta of iPad OS 16.2. Within the new beta, Apple has added back support for external displays with Stage Manager. However, it is to be noted that external display support will be limited to iPads with the M1 and M2 processors so, while you may have an iPad that supports Stage Manager, it may not support using the feature with an external display.
Stage Manager is still putting on quite a show
Stage Manager has, admittedly, experienced an incredibly rocky start. While the feature has run relatively smoothly on macOS, iPadOS users continue to experience tons of issues attempting to use the feature on the iPad.
MacStories’ Federico Viticci has already pointed out that, just hours after testing the new iPadOS 16. 2 beta, Stage Manager is still relatively broken:
Tried Stage Manager on iPadOS 16.2 beta 1. You know the drill:- Windows still randomly cover the dock – Magic Keyboard still not working for me with QuickType enabled- External display features unchanged from earlier betas- I got this after 2 minutes: pic.twitter.com/1jkHJuw2nuOctober 25, 2022
Apple has continued to work on the feature, attempting to get it to a place where it will run smoothly for iPad users. At this point, I think most iPad users are holding out for iPadOS 17.