ldstephens

iPadOS 26 and clipboard manager apps

Yesterday I posted a note saying the changes coming to iPadOS 26 sound really interesting. So interesting that I might for the first time ever install a developer beta just to check it out.

Well, I did it. I installed iPadOS 26 on my M2 iPad Air. I rarely use an iPad, so I'm not too worried about bugs or things breaking.

What caught my attention most was the new multitasking window system. It's actually kinda cool but definitely still a beta 1, but promising.

I was also curious how clipboard manager apps would behave. I use Copy 'Em and ran a few tests. Turns out, as long as the app is open with whatever you're doing, anything you copy gets saved to the clipboard manager. That's a big deal!

Since iPadOS doesn't allow background clipboard monitoring, most clipboard apps need to be opened manually to capture anything. But with the new window system, if the clipboard app is an active window, it'll catch whatever you copy.