How To Use iPad Split View and Slide Over

Multitasking on an iPad in iOS 14 is done using either Split View or Slide Over. The first allows you to split your screen between two apps. The second will palce a small vertical window over the main app. But activiating these features takes some complicated gestures.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you how to use Split View and Slide Over on your iPad
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So multitasking for the iPad has been around for awhile now but it seems to change a little bit with each version of iOS. So looking at iPad OS 14 you can have both Split View, where you have two apps on the screen at the same time, and also Slide Over, where you have a movable window on top of either one or two apps on the screen. Now using these requires you to use some complex gestures and it's very difficult to use. I'm reminded of a line in Galaxy Quest when they talk about the conveyor beam that beams them down from the spaceship to the surface of the planet. The controls are described as more of an art than a science in getting it right. That's kind of like what it's like here. You have to move things just right to use multitasking. It can be very frustrating if you're not good at using gestures on an iPad. Even I have to sometimes do it two or three times to get exactly what I want. So you have to have some patience if you're not good with touch screen gestures.
Let's start off here by simply launching one app, I'll just launch Safari here. Let's say we want to bring up another app. So the easiest way to do this is to use the Dock at the bottom. So normally you would take your finger and swipe slightly up from the bottom of the screen. Since I'm using a mouse here so I can show the pointer on the screen all I need to do is move the mouse to the bottom and the Dock appears. So you're going to have to do a little swipe up at the bottom. Then you get the Dock that shows you the apps that you placed in the Dock and also the three most recent apps you've used. So you need to choose one of these for the second app to appear on the screen. If what you want isn't there I'll show you how to get it there or how to actually use a second app even if it's not in the Dock. I'm going to go and tap and hold Stocks here. I'm going to tap and hold it for a second. If you hold it too long you get a little menu that appears which is okay. You can still start dragging upward and now you can see you get this little vertical rectangle here where you can place either on the right or left side of the screen. You could also go all the way to the right and this is how you get Split View. It's going to place it on the right or all the way to the left and it will place it on the left. 
So let's do that first. I'll place it over here. Now you could see the screen is split with Safari on the left and the Stocks app on the right. Now I get this little line here in the middle that I could drag back and forth. I can use that to have the Stocks app appear as the smaller app and Safari take up the most space or I could do the opposite. Also if you drag enough the other app just goes away and you're back to one app full screen. I should add here that not all apps support multitasking. So you may find some third party apps just don't work at all. If you try to do this it'll always want to just replace the entire screen. It's up to the developer to add the code in to have it work in either Split View or Slide Over. Most of the Apple apps will work just fine like this and some third party apps. But if it's not working, it's not working. There's nothing you can do. The developer would have to add this functionality in. 
Now what if we wanted to do the same thing but with Slide Over. So I'll do the same thing to start. Bringing up the Dock, tapping and holding, and then dragging this up. But instead of going all the way to the right or all the way to the left I'll just lift my finger up while it's right there. You could see it appears as this little window, a vertical rectangle, that's on the right side of the screen. I could grab the line at the top and move it to the left side of the screen if I wanted. I could also convert this to Split View by dragging it either to the right side of the screen or the left side of the screen. If I do that I could convert back to Slide Over by tapping the line and then bringing it down until it goes back into that vertical rectangle. Then I release and now it's back in Slide Over mode. 
Now I can dismiss it entirely by kind of throwing it off the right side of the screen. So this is a little tricky to use. You've kind of got to go and take it and throw it like that and it gets thrown off. If you actually drag it all the way to the right it will go into Split View. So some of that art versus science kind of thing. It's really difficult to get that gesture right. But if you do throw it off the right side of the screen you can actually drag with your finger from the right side over and bring it back. The cool thing about Slide Over is you can have multiple apps in Slide Over. So I'm going to drag up from the bottom here to bring up the Dock. Let's bring up something like Clock. I'm going to drag that up, just like I'm going to do with Slide Over view, and it will replace this one. But if I go to the bottom here, to this line, and I drag up you could see both are there. It goes into this kind of App Switcher mode. I can switch to the other app. So I can have multiple Slide Overs like that. You could bring up three, four, or more apps like this in Slide Over view and switch between them pretty easily. You could also use this App Switcher view to dismiss them. So I could drag up from that bottom line and take one of these and drag it up and out. Up and Out. 
So what if we wanted to bring up an app in Slide Over or Split View that's not in the Dock. Well, one of the things you could do is here in the Dock, the right side bar, are the most recent apps. The ones that won't be on the left side. So you can go and turn that On or Off in Settings, Home Screen & Dock. Make sure you have Suggested & Recent Apps turned on else you won't see those three over to the right. So you could always just launch an app to make it a recent app and then it's there in the Dock. 
You also have controls in here for Multitasking. So you want to make sure you have Allow Multiple Apps turned On and the Gestures turned On as well or none of this will work. 
But there is a way to bring up any app you want from the Home Screen even if it's not in the Dock. Let's say we want to bring up Podcast even though it's not here in the Dock. So what I can do is tap and drag the Podcast app so that it's actually moving, like you're going to move it to another location on the Home Screen. Then with another hand you're going to drag up from the bottom of the screen to bring up Multitasking. Then what's going to happen is that you're going to be able to then drop this app onto another app to do multitasking. But you've got to be fast because if you don't move quickly it will drop on the first app that it finds. So I'm going to swipe up from the bottom. Go to Multitasking. Go to Safari and wait. Then Safari will launch and now you see I can use this in Slide Over view or have it be Split View. This is a very difficult gesture to master. 
Oh, and by the way, it's easy to replace an app that's in Split View. All you need to do is, say if you have two apps like this in Split View, bring up another one just like you were going to add it to Split View. But you drag it on top of one of the two apps and it replaces it. I should also point out that if you have Split View on, so for instance let's bring up  Podcasts here and put it in Split View. I could still have Slide Over appear. So I could bring up the Clock here. Bring that up and you could see how it wants to replace either one of these two. But if I move to the center here you could see how it appears as a Slide Over window. Now I could bring it up as a Slide Over. 
So there's a lot of ways to combine these. I can have multiple Slide Overs there. I could only see one at a time and I can have two apps in Split View all at the same time. Now if you want to use this definitely practice. It's very difficult. If you're not good with gestures it's going to be frustrating. It's going to take some patience. So give it a try and see how well it works for you and see if you find it useful.

Comments: 4 Responses to “How To Use iPad Split View and Slide Over”

John Russell

4 years ago

It would be nice if we could ask Siri, "Hey, Siri - - put Safari and Pages in split view."

Terry Mann

So useful. My mother just bought an iPad and I’m about to try to teach her how to do this. You make it so much easier than I ever could!

Bruce C

Thanks for this tutorial, Gary. I’ve used the split screen since they made it available, but this gave me a lot of pointers that I wasn’t aware of. One question: why do you ever use slide over? I’ve known about it, but to me it is just an annoyance. Whenever I accidentally engage it, I immediately close it bc it is blocking my screen. What are some circumstances/examples of where y’all find it useful?

Gary Rosenzweig

Bruce: Different people would use it in different ways. Examples would be to slide over Messages to see and reply to an incoming messages while reading in Safari or Books, add a Reminder while reading your email, look at or edit a Note while exploring in Maps, and so on.

Comments Closed.

How To Use iPad Split View and Slide Over

Comments: 4 Responses to “How To Use iPad Split View and Slide Over”

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