Hands-On With iPadOS 26.1's New Slide Over Mode For iPad

With iPadOS 26.1 beta 2 now available to developers, Apple re-added the Slide Over mode as part of the multitasking features iPad users can take advantage of. With iPadOS 18, Slide Over was very useful, especially when you needed a small version of the app while you're doing something else.

In promotional videos, Apple would often hint at Slide Over as a fun way to drag and drop photos to a document or messaging app. Unfortunately, with the first release of iPadOS 26, the company got rid of Slide Over and Split View in favor of Window Tilling and Stage Manager options.

Thankfully, in the second beta of iPadOS 26.1, Apple is bringing a revamped version of Slide Over back, which means users can finally have this familiar experience back, but with a few twists. Here's everything new with the new Slide Over mode, and how you'll be able to use it soon.

First of all, accessing the Slide Over functionality might be tricky. While Apple could change that during the development of iPadOS 26.1, currently the only way to bring Slide Over back is by tapping the Mac-like menus for closing, minimizing, and maximizing the app, and then long-pressing the green option. There, you'll see an "Enter Slide Over" option.

With Slide Over activated on iPadOS 26.1 beta, the app you chose will continue to be displayed in front of all the other apps. It's possible to resize this app and all the others opened up on your iPad.

While you can only replace Slide Over with another app, I do wish Apple would let me stack several apps in Slide Over, as the company offered with previous versions. Still, what we have in beta 2 is already a huge improvement for the new multitasking capabilities available with iPadOS 26.