Windowing and shortcuts on iPadOS 26

[Stephen Watson]

Hiya,

I’ve just written the following to Apple via Apple.com/feedback:

“I’ve had a shortcut on my Home Screen for months and months that has worked just fine since the introduction of iPadOS 26 - it opens two apps in split screen 2/3 & 1/3.

Since 26.4 I have always used Windowed Apps mode but now when I run my shortcut it opens the 2/3 app in Full Screen and in the Settings app my Multitasking Mode has been reset to Full Screen Apps.

I reset to Windowed Apps and open the app (& others) directly and all is fine. I run my shortcut again and I’m back in Full Screen mode again. I added a line to set the shortcut explicitly to Windowed Apps but it still opens in Full Screen.”

If you use an iPad and have any shortcuts like this, please try it out and if it’s broken just pop a note to Apple. If it works then maybe I’m doing something wrong …

Cheers,
Stephen

You meet your destiny on the road you take to avoid it. ~ Carl Jung

[Jason Davies]

On 27 Mar 2026, at 10:05, 'Stephen Watson' via Sussex Mac User Group wrote:

If you use an iPad and have any shortcuts like this, please try it out and if it’s broken just pop a note to Apple. If it works then maybe I’m doing something wrong …

Virtually every Apple-facing subreddit is awash with discussion/complaints like this...it's worth logging the bugs but they are dealing with an awful lot so it might wait until iPadOS 27

Cheers,

Jason