Here’s everything you need to know about Apple’s new operating system for iPad, iPad Air, iPad Mini and iPad Pro.
Apple has finally announced iPadOS 14, so we now know how iPads will change when it eventually rolls out towards the end of the year. The new tablet operating system update is based on iOS 14, but with a few extra features which might transform how you use your iPad.
iPadOS, released in 2019, was a forked version of iOS which had a few features designed just for iPads, and iPadOS 14, its successor, announced alongside iOS 14 at Apple’s WWDC 2020 event, continues that legacy with changes for accessibility and the Apple Pencil, as well as other things.
Apple gave an overview of the new operating system during its WWDC keynote, but we often find with Apple software there are more key features it doesn’t share the details of straight away, so we’ll update this article over time as more information comes to light.
Apple has released a device compatibility list, and it’s good news for people who liked the original version of iPadOS, as no devices that were able to download that version have been left off this new list, and of course it includes new iPads released in the last year.
We don’t yet know the iPadOS 14 release date, though the public beta has officially been released, and anyone with an Apple ID can get an early look at the update. You can still sign up for the developer beta if you want, since those betas get access to features before the public versions do. But we’ll let you know as soon as Apple shares full release date info.
We’re not sure when iPadOS 14 will drop – while Apple’s software is generally unveiled at WWDC, it’s usually released later, alongside that year’s new iPhones, which this year will be the iPhone 12 range.
However, the Covid-19 pandemic has reportedly caused the iPhone 12 release to be pushed back, and we’re not sure by how much, so we could see iPadOS 14 released at any point from the eventual iPhone launch date to the end of the year, or perhaps even 2021.
An iPadOS 14 developer beta was released during WWDC 2020, with a public beta following on July 9. Betas will be a preliminary version of the update for the public that keen users can download to try it out.
Apple has officially unveiled its iPadOS 14 compatibility list, and it includes all the devices that were able to get the original iPadOS build, plus the new iPads released since.
The following features are ones Apple has confirmed are coming to iPadOS 14.
The first new feature Apple mentioned for iPadOS 14 is an improvement for its own apps – it used Photos as an example, and mentioned Notes and Files too – which adds a sidebar to improve navigation, in the same way that macOS has a bar at the side of Finder windows which shows all the menus available.
If it wasn’t already clear that Apple wants iPadOS to feel like a ‘Lite’ version of macOS, it certainly is now.
