Multitasking / Picture in picture

iOS 9 on the iPad introduces some new ways to multitask on the device. A new Slide Over feature lets you swipe in from the right of the display to look at another app without closing the app you’re currently in. The iPad Air 2 also has the benefit of a full, split-screen mode that lets you run two different apps at the same time. The split-screen mode is essentially an extension of the slide over, which only covers a portion of the display and renders the app below inactive. It’s very similar to the split-screen modes that have long been available in Windows and Samsung’s Android devices, but it’s a completely new idea for the iPad.

Split-screen multitasking lets you compose an email while looking at a website, browse a map while reading a note, or send messages while paging through a news article. It has the potential to make the iPad a much more productive device for getting work done. Unfortunately, in this early version of iOS 9, only Apple’s native apps support split-screen functions. You can compose in Messages while looking at The Verge in Safari, but you can’t look at your Twitter timeline while reading your email. We’re pretty excited about this feature and are eager for the final release of iOS 9, when third-party app developers are able to take advantage of it.

New multitasking features have the potential to dramatically change the iPad experience

The other new multitasking feature in iOS 9 on the iPad is picture-in-picture video, which, as you might expect, lets you watch a video in a smaller window while working in another app. Again, it’s a feature that other platforms have had for a while, but before now, if you wanted to do something else while a video was playing in iOS, you had to exit the video entirely. It currently works with Apple’s native video player and any apps that make use of that, but unfortunately YouTube and Netflix are not compatible with it. Apple has said it takes a minimum amount of effort for developers to enable it, so hopefully they will be by the time iOS 9 ships.