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Hi!
Iām writing this on my M1 12.9ā iPad Pro, but Iām not looking at its screen. Instead, I have hooked up to a 27ā BenQ display via Thunderbolt, something I rarely do. Thatās because you get those pesky black bars on the side, and just a mirrored version of your iPad screen.
Or rather, thatās what it used to be like. You see, Iāve got the developer beta of iPadOS 16 installed, and the main feature there is external monitor support with Stage Manager. Iāve got to tell you, itās pretty sweet. No, scratch that, itās bloody brilliant, thatās what it is. At least I think it will be, when the bugs have been ironed out.
Apple announced iPadOS 16 at WWDC this Monday. Itās very much in beta (with improved developer tools), and just for developers at this time. The public beta is due in July, if thatās your thing, with the actual release coming sometime this fall.
So, whatās it like to work on your iPad using Stage Manager?
Wonderful, downright wonderful, at least when it works. Itās an incredibly buggy feature at the moment. Not unusable, just buggy.
Some things to consider:
- Stage Manager works without a mouse and keyboard, but youāll no doubt need to trigger it yourself (and it makes less sense).
- You canāt use Stage Manager on an external monitor without a mouse and keyboard. If those are not present, youāll get the dreaded screen mirroring thing.
- While you can resize windows, you canāt pick any size ā theyāll snap to an ideal one. I think this is fine, but itāll surely annoy some.
- You can invoke and disable Stage Manager yourself, with a Control Center button. There are also toggles for hiding the apps on the side, as well as the dock, for an even more focused writing experience.
That last feature is pretty cool, I must say. It means that you can get a clean writing experience on an external monitor, for example.


How about that? Hiding the dock makes writing in Ulysses, in focus mode, quite pleasant, I must say. It makes less sense on the iPad screen though since you could just as well just use the app in fullscreen, but on an external monitor, where 27ā fullscreen is a lot, itās nice.
Now, youāll no doubt note that things arenāt aligning properly in a vertical sense. There are a lot of those things going on at the moment. Black bars are common when toggling things as well because the apps arenāt rendering properly, or rather, refreshing their full windows. Itās obvious that iPadOS isnāt a windowed user interface by default, although these things will be fixed, no doubt. Some apps, when jumping between the external monitor and the iPad one, end up in the wrong orientation. See: Weather to the left.


Not for all iPads
Iām afraid, not all iPads are created equal when it comes to the Stage Manager feature. While iPadOS 16 will work with most devices (theyāre dropping support for iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 4, though), the Stage Manager feature requires an M1 (or better) equipped iPad. That means that the current iPad Pros, and the latest iPad Air, are the only iPads thatāll have access to this feature. If youāve got a 2018 iPad Pro, which has USB-C and has the same form factor as the current models, you canāt use Stage Manager. The same goes for the iPad mini 6, thereās no M1 in that one either.
My guess is that the RAM is more of an issue than the actual chipsets, and thatās why 2018 iPad Pros or the iPad mini 6 canāt use Stage Manager. You can, after all, connect a high-resolution display that extends your iPadās already high-resolution screen real-estate. Thatās a lot of pixels to push around.
Stage Manager is, for now, a pro feature. I guess itāll stay that way until M1 CPUs are more outspread, but I can understand the frustration from iPad owners. Because yes, thereās plenty of that as a response to this limitation, especially from 2018 iPad Pro owners. After all, that particular device has the same chip (A14Z) that Apple put in their Apple Silicon dev machine, and that was good enough then.
Is it a game changer?
Iām optimistic towards Stage Manager. Itās a better representation of multitasking, and a pretty nice experience on the 12.9ā iPad Pro. Iāve yet to install the developer beta on an 11ā device, but I suspect Stage Manager will feel cramped there.
It is, obviously, on external monitors that this feature truly shines. The one thing I truly wanted from WWDC was proper external monitor setup, and this, while being a compromise, is close to that. Iāve got a lot of thinking to do regarding future iPad setups. For example, pairing the 11ā iPad Pro with a 20ā wall-mounted (or so) USB-C monitor might be an ergonomic, and pleasant, setup.
What do you think? Is Stage Manager the solution to all your external monitor woes? Iād love to know your thoughts.
ā Thord D. Hedengren ā”