iPads now has its own operating system: iPadOS

The first Apple iPad has been around almost a decade ago and ever since it began, it relied on iOS as its operating system of choice. But today, that’s about to change.

At its 9th year anniversary, Apple officially gave the iPad its own operating system, unsurprisingly enough it’s called the iPadOS. This is actually a blown-up version of iOS designed specifically to cater the larger displays on iPad devices.

The first thing you’ll notice about the new OS is the tighter icon grid but also the main screen now supports widgets with the splitscreen feature further improved with now the ability to launch two instances of the same app in two separate windows. There’s also the slideover feature that lets you swipe from the bottom to launch apps in window mode.

New gestures available for iPadOS didn’t stop there as it comes with a handful of those specifically designed to make your iPad experience more productive and intuitive and that includes a new copy-paste gestures where you’ll to make a three-finger pinch gestures to make actions and a three finger swipe to undo your last action.

iCloud Drive now supports folder sharing and SMB file sharing. It also now accepts flash drives and can browse contents from the flashdrive on the Files app. Plus if you have zip files around, the Files app will also be able to work on that as well.

The Apple Pencil support on iPadOS does wonders as the latency is significantly dropped from 20ms down to just 9ms ensuring an even more responsiveness. Pencil tools supports isn’t just available within the iPad’s built-in apps but can now be access anywhere on any app.