Paul McFedries - iPad and iPad Pro For Dummies

To give slide over a whirl, first launch the app that you want to run in slide over mode. Tap the app’s multitasking icon (labeled in Figure 2-6) to display the multitasking menu, and then tap the slide over icon (again, see Figure 2-6). iPadOS shrinks the app window and displays the Home screen. Tap the icon of the app that you want to run full screen. This second app opens normally and the slide over app remains onscreen on top of the full-screen app.

When you’re finished with slide over, tap the multitasking icon in the slide over app and then tap the full screen icon.

The slide over feature works with Apple’s own apps and quite a few third-party apps. If you don’t see the multitasking icon, it means the app doesn’t support slide over.

There’s a good possibility that your television at home has a picture-in-picture feature that enables you to watch one channel in the main portion of the TV screen while checking out a second channel in a small window on the screen. You don’t really want to miss any of the action in the big game now, do you?

Your iPad has the same feature. The picture-in-picture feature on the iPad works when you’re on a FaceTime video call, watching a video stored on your iPad, or streaming a video from one of the many streaming video services. These topics are reserved for Chapter 8.

To give picture-in-picture a whirl, start a video and press the Home button (if your iPad has one) or tap the picture-in-picture icon, shown in the margin. The video picture shrinks into a small window hanging out in the upper-left corner of the display.

You can pause the video or shut it down by tapping the controls that appear in this diminutive video window. (Tap the window if you don’t see the controls.) If you want the video to take over the entire iPad screen, tap the restore icon (shown in the margin) inside the video window.

Meanwhile, if the video window is blocking a portion of the screen that you want to see, you can drag it to another space.

Finding the single app that you want to use among apps spread out over 15 screens may seem like a daunting task. But Apple felt your pain and added a handy organizational tool: folders. The Folders feature lets you create folder icons, each containing apps that pertain to the name that Apple assigned or you gave to that folder.

To create a folder, follow these steps:

1 Long-press an icon until all the icons on the screen wiggle.

2 Decide which apps you want to move to a folder and then drag the icon for the first app on top of the second app.The two apps now share living quarters inside a newly created folder. Apple names the folder according to the category of apps inside the folder.

3 (Optional) Change the folder name by tapping the X on the bar where the folder name appears and typing a new name.

To launch an app inside a folder, tap that folder’s icon and then tap the icon for the app that you want to open.

When you drag all the apps from a folder, the folder automatically disappears.

iPadOS’s AirPrint feature allows you to print wirelessly from the iPad to an AirPrint-capable printer, available from all major printer manufacturers.

AirPrint works with Mail, Photos, Safari, and Books (PDF files). You can also print from apps in Apple’s iWork software suite, as well as third-party apps with built-in printing.

An AirPrint printer doesn’t need any special software, but it does have to be connected to the same Wi-Fi network as the iPad.

To print, follow these steps:

1 Tap the share icon, and then tap the Print command.In the Mail app, open the message you want to print, tap the reply icon in the lower-right corner, and then tap Print.The icon is shown in the margin.

2 In the Print Options dialog that appears, tap Select Printer to select a printer, which the iPad locates in short order.

3 Depending on the printer, specify the number of copies you want to print, the number of double-sided copies, and a range of pages to print.You might even see a graphic indicating how much ink is left in the printer.

4 When you’re happy with your settings, tap Print.

You can search for people and programs across your iPad and in specific apps, using a combination of the search feature and Siri. I show you how to search in apps in the various chapters dedicated to Mail, Contacts, Calendar, and Music.

The search feature can find news and trending topics, local restaurants, movie times, and content in Apple’s own iTunes Store, App Store, and Book Store. Moreover, with Siri teaming up with the search feature, you’ll also see circled icons representing the contacts you engage with the most, the people you are next scheduled to meet, as well as eateries, shops, and other places of possible interest nearby.

Searches are also proactive, meaning that the device gets to know you over time and makes suggestions accordingly. It attempts to read your mind. The tablet might surface the News app, for example, if it learns that you turn to it every morning (while enjoying your coffee). Or if you’re in a particular area, you may see the news that’s trending in your location.

Here’s how the search feature works:

1 Swipe down from the center of any Home screen page to access Search.The Search dialog slides into view at the top of the screen.

2 Tap the Search text box and use the virtual keyboard to enter your search text.The iPad spits out results the moment you type a single character; the list narrows as you type additional characters.The results are pretty darn thorough. Say that you entered Ring as your search term. Contacts whose last names have Ring in them show up, along with friends who might have done a trapeze act in the now defunct Ringling Bros. circus. All the songs on your iPad by Ringo Starr show up too, as do such song titles as “Ring-A-Ling,” from the Black-Eyed Peas if that happens to be in your library. The same goes for apps, videos, audiobooks, events, and notes with the word Ring. You’ll see web and App Store references as well.

3 Tap any listing to jump to the contact, ditty, or app you seek.

At the bottom of the search results list, you see several commands for running your search query in specific apps, such as Contacts, Messages, and Maps.

You can prevent some apps and their content from appearing in the search results by choosing Settings ⇒ Siri & Search. In the list of apps, tap an app and then tap the Show App in Search switch to off to prevent the app from appearing in your search results. To also prevent the app’s content from appearing in your search results, tap the Show Content in Search switch to off.

As you know by now, instead of a physical keyboard, a virtual keyboard slides up from the bottom of the iPad screen. You have a choice of several English-language or (depending upon what you chose during setup) foreign-language keyboard layouts, including variations on the alphabetical keyboard, the numeric and punctuation keyboard, the more punctuation and symbols keyboard, and the emoji keyboard.