iOS 11 brings a number of productivity-oriented tweaks, chief among them features related to multitasking. Apple is making multitasking easier on iPad with iOS 11 and revamping the Dock to give you easier, faster access to your favorite apps. You can now do things like drag multiple pictures from your photo album into the Messages app that opens side by side with your photos. If you have an iPad and want to start multitasking on iOS 11, keep reading.
The new Dock on iOS 11
The iPad, in particular, is getting a number of new features with iOS 11, and one of the best is the new Dock. For those who don’t know, the Dock is the strip on the bottom of your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Apps you drag there will appear on the home screen of all iOS devices, which means it’s a great place to keep apps you use frequently.
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The iOS Dock used to allow you to add four or six apps depending on the device. With iOS 11 and the 10.5-inch iPad Pro, you can add up to 13 apps to the Dock (15 on the 12.9-inch iPad Pro), and iOS will make an additional three apps as smart suggestions based on your usage. All you need to do is start dragging your favorite apps onto the dock to add them. The Dock has also become more useful, but we’ll get to that later.
Multitasking on iOS 11
iOS has been slowly moving towards Mac-like productivity, and iOS 11 is a big step in that direction. iOS 11 greatly improves multitasking on iPad, and here’s how you can access the new app switcher.
- Unlock iPad to open the Home screen.
- Slide up from the bottom of the screen.
- This gesture displays the improved app switcher on iOS 11. You can also Double click the home button to achieve this, but the swipe up gesture is much simpler.
- The customizable control center is located to the right of the app switcher. To change the switch in Control Center, go to set up > control center > Custom controls.
- In the app switcher, you can swipe right to see a long list of open apps, now arranged in two neat rows. This means you can view all your open apps with fewer swipes.
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How to open two apps at the same time in iOS 11
One of the coolest multitasking features in iOS 11 is that you can have two different apps open at the same time to increase productivity. For example, you can have your browser and writing app open at the same time to quickly find information online while you write. Here’s how you can do this.
- Move the two apps you want open at the same time to the Dock in iOS 11.
- Open either of these two applications.
- Now Slide up from the bottom of the screen. This will display the Dock.
- Click and hold and drag A second app in the Dock. You’ll notice a semi-transparent background appearing below the app icon.
- Drag the app icon to the left or right side of the screen. Now both applications will run simultaneously. In this view You can drag pictures or other files from one application to another.
- The above steps will make the second application “float” on top of the first application. This may hide part of one of the applications. To avoid this, Click and hold and drag down The small horizontal white line at the top of a “floating” application. Release this button when you see vertical borders appear on hidden apps.
- Now both apps will open side by side. You’ll notice a small vertical border between the apps. If you want another app to take up more screen space, you can drag it to the left or right.
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Apps running side by side are grouped in the app switcher, which is a neat operation. You can group various apps into sets of two and switch between them to increase your productivity. For example, you can group YouTube and Notes, Netflix and IMDB, Fantastical and Mail, and so on. This way, you can quickly switch between taking notes from a video and emailing them, while checking for upcoming meetings. You can even open a third app while two apps are open side by side, but this will obscure a large portion of one of the apps.
drag and drop
iOS 11 lets you drag and drop multiple items at once. This means you can select multiple photos and send them to Notes simply by dragging and dropping. The drag-and-drop feature supports multiple fingers, so you can drag multiple photos out, drop them into notes, pull out the dock, open a third app and send more photos within it. Yes, you can use multiple fingers and get work done faster. Here’s how to use this feature.
- Open the Photos and Notes apps side by side. You can do this using various other apps, such as Notes & Messages or Mail & Photos.
- Select a photo and hold it, then tap the other photos while holding the first photo. This will select multiple photos and you will see a number indicating how many photos you have selected.
- Now drag and drop them into the annotation. All of these photos will be embedded in your notes.
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This feature works just like other apps like Mail and Messages. You can even use it to select multiple apps on your home screen and put them into a new folder.
Do you have any more tips related to the Dock and multitasking you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments. For more tutorials, head to our how-to section.
We discuss iOS 11 and the future of iPhone and iPad in depth on Orbital, our weekly tech podcast. You can subscribe to it via Apple Podcasts or RSS, or click the play button below.
