General iPadOS 27 discussion

[Populus]

Sadly, I don’t think it supports clamshell mode, I know some were hoping for that. It still requires the iPad’s display to be turned on as far as I can tell. I check in Settings and didn’t see anything for it. 👍🏻

Thank you for taking a look for me. Aside from the Control Center thing, what would you say is the biggest improvement of this release? It seems a bit small compared to iPadOS 26…

Siri AI doesn’t count, something specific of the iPad.

By the way, does the semantic spotlight search work like on the Mac? Is there a proper indexing of the documents and easy to search with natural language like on macOS 27?

 

[Ludatyk]

Thank you for taking a look for me. Aside from the Control Center thing, what would you say is the biggest improvement of this release? It seems a bit small compared to iPadOS 26…

Siri AI doesn’t count, something specific of the iPad.

There’s really no (headlining) dedicated features for the iPad… Apple message this year was geared toward optimizing speed across the entire OS. So, if anything the biggest improvement is speed.

 

[Populus]

There’s really no (headlining) dedicated features for the iPad… Apple message this year was geared toward optimizing speed across the entire OS. So, if anything the biggest improvement is speed.

Yeah, also most of the (minor) features were announced in a general way for all the systems. Which makes sense, as Apple is slowly taking a more holistic approach to the software.

I’m eager to try that snappier, faster performance of iOS/iPadOS 27 both on my iPhone SE 3 and my M2 iPad Pro. They said they focused on the older devices. Hopefully the increase in performance and speed doesn’t come at the cost of battery life.

 

[Kal Madda]

Thank you for taking a look for me. Aside from the Control Center thing, what would you say is the biggest improvement of this release? It seems a bit small compared to iPadOS 26…

Siri AI doesn’t count, something specific of the iPad.

By the way, does the semantic spotlight search work like on the Mac? Is there a proper indexing of the documents and easy to search with natural language like on macOS 27?

So far, I think my favorite is the new Shortcuts actions and prompt generated Shortcuts! Not all of these are specific to the iPad, but some of them are. There are new options for automating workspaces specifically geared for the iPad’s multitasking mode. And I think these actions are actually better than the Mac versions in Shortcuts on the Mac. To get an app window to open in the top leading corner on iPadOS, it requires a single action, the “Open App” action and just set the window location in the action’s additional options. On Mac, you have to use “Open App” and “Move Window” to achieve the same thing. So that’s been really interesting to see. I’ve been doing a lot of experimenting with custom workspace automations. 👍🏻

I also really like being able to keep the Menu Bar pinned. 👍🏻

I’m also glad to see they’ve made some performance enhancements to Files and external drives. While it never felt sluggish to me before, I’ve definitely noticed that just about everything across the system feels more snappy. And Files definitely follows that trend. Apple says file transfers to external drives are now 5x faster. I haven’t had a chance to really test that out, most of the drives I regularly use likely can’t take full advantage of those performance improvements, so they’ll probably run close to the same, but I definitely believe it will enhance thunderbolt drive speeds given the performance enhancements elsewhere. 👍🏻.

I think if we look at platform-specific features, it is probably a fairly small update. But there are lots of little performance improvements and small feature improvements like the aforementioned that just make it a very pleasant update.

Sadly, I don’t have access to the new Siri/Spotlight yet, so can’t really speak to that. I joined the waitlist probably only about half an hour after the beta dropped, but unfortunately, it seems it’s taking a long time to get approved. I’m hoping I’ll get access to it in the next couple days, because I’m really excited to test it out. 👍🏻

 

[Kal Madda]

Yeah, also most of the (minor) features were announced in a general way for all the systems. Which makes sense, as Apple is slowly taking a more holistic approach to the software.

I’m eager to try that snappier, faster performance of iOS/iPadOS 27 both on my iPhone SE 3 and my M2 iPad Pro. They said they focused on the older devices. Hopefully the increase in performance and speed doesn’t come at the cost of battery life.

Oh, so far battery life has been greatly improved over iPadOS 26.6. My battery life wasn’t bad with iPadOS 26, but 27 definitely seems a bit better for battery life so far. 🙂👍🏻

 

[SYCAMOREGRAD]

I'm confused.

Per this View attachment 2637127

iPad Pro 11" 2nd gen and up are supported, but iPad Pro 12.9 starts at 4th gen?
I was under the impression that the only difference on the same family was just the screen size.

Remember that iPP 11” didn’t come out until later. 12.9”, 9.7”, 10.5” and THEN 11” in 2018, which was 12.9” 3rd gen, so the 11 2nd gen and 12.9” fourth gen were the same year.

 

[Kal Madda]

Oh, just noticed this, there actually are separate volume adjustments for alarms, ringtones, and system sounds. So maybe that’s related to multiple audio sources?

 

[richpjr]

Oh, just noticed this, there actually are separate volume adjustments for alarms, ringtones, and system sounds. So maybe that’s related to multiple audio sources?

Sadly, multiple audio sources still isn’t supported. It was the first thing I tried! It wasn’t rumored, but it really limits my use for audio app.s

 

[richpjr]

Overall, I have been very impressed with iPadOS27. Certainly the most stable beta OS I can remember. I have noticed though that I seem to intermittently lose my iPad's cursor when using an external display. Can anyone else confirm if this is happening to them to and I'm not missing something obvious?

I agree - it is very stable for a first beta. The only thing I have noticed so far is my mouse cursor disappeared on my external display after using it for a while. I could not get it to reappear without shutting down and restarting my iPad. After a restart it reappeared.

 

[nickpro]

Can anyone share how Spotlight works on iPadOS? Has it gained the macOS update from last year? Is the functionality different on the Mac now due to Siri AI?

 

[Steve Adams]

Oh, just noticed this, there actually are separate volume adjustments for alarms, ringtones, and system sounds. So maybe that’s related to multiple audio sources?

Do you have this installed on your daily driver?

 

[DankeBrutus]

This will be my first time installing a developer beta, I usually wait for the public release. Slide Over is still a complete joke compared to what it used to be. I left feedback during the iPadOS 26 public beta that iPadOS 18 styled multitasking could be a toggle for the Fullscreen apps mode, but who knows if that was ever seen or considered.

I immediately noticed how much cleaner the GUI is. Icons are perhaps too sharp sometimes? But Liquid Glass looks much better in 27. I put the slider all the way to the left to see what it would be like and I actually kinda like it. The adjustments made for visibility with high contrast elements behind the "glass" helps a lot. I've also noticed the smoother animations on the home screen. I broke out my Logitech keyboard case from like 2019 or something for my yearly retry at treating the iPad more like a laptop. Having the Global Menu able to always be visible is intriguing, but I ran into a problem with it so had to submit more feedback. Since the Global Menu is now aligned to the left instead of the middle of the display I actually want to have the Global Menu to be accessible from the Fullscreen "multitasking" mode.

 

[Ludatyk]

It shows up under stage manager, but I’m a traditionalist. Full screen all the way!

You do know that apps stay in their size state... in essence you can run apps in full screen (without ever resizing) using any multitasking mode.

 

[Kal Madda]

Do you have this installed on your daily driver?

Yep, probably not usually advisable, but I have everything backed up, and I’ve never encountered any major bugs or issues over the years I’ve been running them. 🙂👍🏻

 

[Kal Madda]

Can anyone share how Spotlight works on iPadOS? Has it gained the macOS update from last year? Is the functionality different on the Mac now due to Siri AI?

More or less. It doesn’t have the Apps page (it shows suggested apps and shows apps you begin to type names of and stuff, just doesn’t need the Apps page cause iOS and iPadOS have App Library), or the system clipboard (clipboard only holds one active item in iOS and iPadOS, doesn’t keep a history, but this will likely change in the future if I had to guess), but everything else works the same so far. 🙂👍🏻. You can ask it to perform tasks for you, like texting a contact, etc. just like Spotlight on Mac. And to be fair, the Apps page and system clipboard history stuff don’t show up in the Spotlight UI as separate buttons anymore, they have to be accessed via keyboard shortcut or the App Dock icon in the case of the Apps page. So it’s pretty consistent even on that front. 👍🏻