iPadOS 26 public beta — 5 features I'd try first

Tom's Guide

2 days ago

The iPadOS 26 public beta is now live, which means you can check out some of the new features coming to the best iPads. This isn't a small update either, so you'll want to be prepared before diving in.
I've used iPadOS 26 for the past month, and I can tell you that it's a pretty substantial upgrade. Not only does it introduce the Liquid Glass design language that's also coming to iOS 26, macOS 26 and watchOS 26, but it has new features that make your iPad feel more like the best MacBooks. Toss in other productivity-focused features and Apple Intelligence updates, and iPadOS 26 has a lot going for it.
If you've signed up for the iPadOS 26 public beta and want to know what the new operating system is all about, here are some features you should try first.
The Liquid Glass design is the thing that stands out the most on iPadOS 26. That said, the new look doesn't seem as prominent as it appears on iPhones. Liquid Glass is very hard to ignore on the latter, but I sometimes forget it's a thing for iPads. That said, you can make the Liquid Glass effect really stand out if you want.
In the iPad's customize submenu on the Home screen, you can select the new Clear option. Clear removes all color from apps and makes them transparent. This can be jarring, or downright unusable if your background has bold colors that make your apps and widgets effectively invisible (as seen in the example above).
With the right background, though, the transparent apps and widgets can look very cool. You should play around with Liquid Glass to see how you like it.
I've previously written about how the new iPadOS 26 windowing system could be a productivity game-changer. Now, I can unequivocally say that it is extremely useful if you want to use your iPad as a MacBook replacement or even as your main device for work. It might not be perfect, but it's a huge step forward for being productive on an iPad.
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The new windowing system lets you close, minimize, resize and tile windows to your liking. The latter has been designed for an iPad's screen, letting you snap windows into place with a quick swipe. One neat aspect is that any app you've previously resized will open back up in the same spot and size every single time.
If you have an iPad, this is a major feature you need to check out!
You'll see some new apps on iPadOS 26, including Games, Preview, Journal and Phone. Before you say it, yes, I realize that apps like Journal and Phone aren't exactly new. However, they are new on the iPad, so they technically count.
The Games app organizes the games you have installed to make them easier to find and launch. The Journal app from iPhone is a nice addition and can be easier to use on an iPad than on iPhone, especially if your iPad is connected to an Apple Magic Keyboard.
Preview lets you view, edit and mark up PDFs and images with Apple Pencil or by touch. You can access all of your PDFs and images in the Files app from Preview, create an empty page, use Apple Pencil to draw and write on it, and use AutoFill to fill out PDF Forms.
Then we have the Phone app, which, as you might have guessed, allows you to make and receive phone calls on your iPad. The old jokes about iPads just being large iPhones that can't make calls are now only half true.
The menu bar from macOS makes its way to iPadOS 26 and functions just as well. It features the red, yellow and green circles for close, minimize and full screen (respectively). You can access these controls by swiping down or moving the cursor up.
Having a Mac's menu bar on iPad is simultaneously strange and intuitive. Strange, because I'm still not used to seeing the menu bar on iPad, but intuitive because it largely functions the same as it does on Macs. This is another great feature that can boost your productivity and is well worth checking out.
Image Playground gets a nice upgrade on iPadOS 26. It has expanded features and functions, such as the ability to have ChatGPT generate images. Doing so gives you access to several different visual styles like oil painting, watercolor, anime and more.
Your mileage may vary depending on how often you use AI to create images. That said, this ChatGPT-powered Image Playground generates images quickly enough, though said images might not be very accurate… such as the image above that depicts a pretty incorrect Manhattan skyline.
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