I was disappointed when Apple announced zero updates for the iPad’s Stage Manager feature at WWDC24. I wanted iPadOS 18 to turn my iPad into a multitasking beast, but Stage Manager continues to put off power users and confuse everyone else. Fixing Stage Manager shouldn’t be too hard at this point.

3 Stage Manager Fixes Apple Should Make

Whenever I want to use Stage Manager, I’m reminded of its limitations. With Apple’s recent focus on catching up to its rivals regarding AI, no wonder it neglected Stage Manager.

There are many reasons why I don’t use Stage Manager on my iPad or Mac, and they all boil down to one thing: Stage Manager makes iPad multitasking worse, not better. I’d gladly use my iPad full-time if only Apple made these three simple fixes to Stage Manager.

Let Me Run More Than 4 Apps in a Window

This is the single biggest factor stopping me from using my iPad as a full-fledged computer. Stage Manager limits me to four apps at once in a single “window” that Apple calls a “stage.”

This made sense when Stage Manager debuted in 2022, as earlier iPads had constrained RAM. Fast-forward to today, however, and Stage Manager suffers from the same restrictions despite improved hardware.

I use about a dozen apps on my iPad on any given day. I usually run Safari, Mail, Messages, and Notes in one stage, with the Calendar, X, Files, Stocks, and other productivity apps in several other stages. That means I have to invoke the app switcher and cycle through these Spaces-like environments whenever I want to use an app not in my current workspace.

I don’t want to juggle between multiple workspaces like an animal. Instead, let me easily run at least eight apps in one window and drag-and-drop between them.

Dropping the four-apps-per-stage restriction shouldn’t be an issue now that iPads and Macs are equipped with 16GB of RAM as standard. At the very least, Stage Manager should check the system requirements to allow for more apps per window on more powerful devices.

Allow Me To Use My Home Screen Widgets

As Stage Manager doesn’t take up the whole screen, the Home Screen shows through the breathing room around the edges of your stage. Sadly, Home Screen widgets don’t show when Stage Manager is active, even if you only have a single app window open.

I would naturally expect Stage Manager to go away when I touch the Home Screen, kind of like the macOS feature where you click the desktop to show it.

Don’t make me swipe up or disable Stage Manager entirely so that I can flag a task in my Calendar widget or interact with my Home Screen. When I click the Home Screen in Stage Manager, please swoosh my apps out of view and reveal my widgets.

While multitasking, I check my widgets from time to time. So why complicate my existence by forcing me to choose between Stage Manager and my Home Screen widgets?

Boost iPad Multitasking With App Exposé

iPadOS 17 lets me resize app windows in a stage in smaller increments. But switching between Stage Manager apps is still a chore, especially with multiple overlapping windows. Selecting something that’s not in the foreground shouldn’t be this clunky. Mixing thumbnails of recent apps and Stage Manager workspaces in the app switcher doesn’t help either.

But I know what would: porting the Mac’s App Exposé feature to iPadOS. An overview of my app windows invoked with a four-finger “claw” trackpad gesture like on macOS would solve window management in Stage Manager in one fell swoop.

While you’re at it, Apple, make it so that swiping up and holding from the bottom edge of the display while Stage Manager is active brings up Expose instead of the task switcher.

Also, Bigger iPads Would Be Nice

Stage Manager on 13-inch screens feels constrained and not living up to its full potential. A bigger multitasking canvas is available on 15 and 16-inch MacBooks, but iPads don’t go beyond 13 inches and 11-inch models make Stage Manager way too clunky to use.

The 11-inch Stage Manager is too small for comfortable multitasking, and I don’t believe the 13-inch size is adequate to get enough people using Stage Manager full-time.

The popularity of the 15-inch MacBook Air is proof that the mainstream consumer loves this size of device. There are rumors that Apple is developing larger iPads, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a 15-inch iPad Pro that would give me the screen real-estate of a laptop.

No, I Don’t Want to Run macOS on My iPad

The truth is, I’m not crazy about multitasking with Stage Manager on my iPad until the above limitations are gone. That includes the Mac.

Unlike others, I’m not asking to run a macOS fork on my iPad. Give me computer-level multitasking within iPadOS instead. If Apple makes the above fixes, Stage Manager is definitely going to work much better for everyone and become a mainstream feature.