**Maximizing Stage Manager: Tips and Tricks**

Stage manager is a game-changer for Apple fans who want to multitask like pros. With this powerful feature, you can easily switch between multiple apps, open windows, and even resize them to fit your screen perfectly. One of the ways to maximize stage manager is to keep in mind that you can have four windows open not four apps but four Windows basically. You could have four instances of the same app open on your screen at the same time. I have Apple Notes open here and if I want to, I can drag out several of these notes and have them all on my screen at once.

Another way that I easily bring up another instance of the same app is by long pressing on the icon in the dock and tap show all windows which brings up a plus icon which lets me then open a new instance personally I find that to be a little bit cumbersome though and I much prefer to just hit that globe and down arrow key which brings up the same interface and makes it a lot faster. Now, once you've got your apps all sorted into the proper groups it's very easy to switch between them but there's multiple ways you can take your cursor and slide over past the side of the screen and you'll see that your recent apps are going to pop up and you can easily just tap to open up a new group that's nice but I also like using a three-finger swipe to go back and forth between my different apps and app groups very easily.

For multitasking, you can just swipe your finger across the bottom of your screen and it basically does the same thing as a three-finger Swipe by this point you're probably familiar with the three-finger swipe up install which is going to bring up all your apps your multitasking menu and if you're a Mac User you're probably used to using the command tab shortcut to very quickly find whatever the app is that you want to switch to and switch that way. Now, that method is great for jumping into and out of stages but let's say you've got four apps open and it's getting a little busy and you want to flip through those with a keyboard shortcut you can just use Globe Tilda or back quote key and you can run through those really quickly that way as well.

As an added bonus, if you ever forget these keyboard shortcuts it's really easy to figure out what they are whatever app you're in just hold down the command key and you'll surface the available keyboard shortcuts. One really useful stage manager tip that I use all the time to snipe one app out of one stage and bring it into another is to bring up that shelf with my recent app groups and then on a big app Group instead of tapping on that group to switch to it I can tap on any of the Little icons in that group and then bring out a particular window and drop it into the stage.

**Using Stage Manager with External Displays**

The biggest thing to realize about using stage manager with an external display like the studio display I'm showing off in this video is that tapping and already open apps icon in the dock of either the iPad or the external monitor will move that already open app to the display that you tapped on so for instance if you have Apple Notes open on the studio display and then you tap on the Apple notes icon in the dock on your iPad it's going to move the Apple notes window down to your iPad which is actually useful knowledge for this setup because then you can use your apple pencil to make a handwritten note or to sketch something out and then tap on that icon on the studio display to move it back up for reference while you do something else on your iPad.

As a general rule of thumb I like to keep apps that I might use the apple pencil with parked on my iPad display right in front of me on the magic keyboard so it's quick and easy to access good for editing photos with the apple pencil for instance then you can kick it back up to the other display if you want to use a mouse and a bigger screen. Sometimes, it's nice to just keep your iPad desktop open and free kind of use it like a dashboard with those widgets so you can change your music right there or jump into a recent note or maybe activate a shortcut.

**Additional Tips and Tricks**

Stage manager has absolutely been an upgrade for me in my iPad experience and hopefully you've picked up some tips and some ideas from watching this video that can make it a huge upgrade in your life and work as well. Make sure to check out the course 30% off one of the students recently called it lifechanging if you haven't yet support our sponsor grab yourself a paper like personally endorsed by me I really love paper leg screen protectors make sure to check out the newsletter as well comes out every Friday packed full of useful information for Apple Fans and I'll catch you in the next video later.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ensingle centered app two apps side by side three columns four columns four quadrants overlapping but partially hidden with one focus app over on the right an app above to type in and an app below to write in four on the iPad four on the external monitor hey it's Chris and as you can see multitasking on the iPad has gotten very good very flexible very powerful and today I want to help you master multitasking on the iPad with Stage manager and just as a side note I actually put this whole video together I did the writing research organization brainstorming outlining all of the above and more together using an iPad with Stage manager at my desk with an external monitor heads up before we get started my learning to be productive course is 30% off for a very limited time it's linked up down below more on that later just a little clarification before we get any further when we talk about multitasking what we're really talking about most of the time is accomplishing one task or monotasking using multiple apps so in the real world you actually get more done when you're very focused on accomplishing something in particular which yeah can sometimes require more than one app now when it comes to using multiple apps at the same time on the iPad there's two flavors that you can choose from there's the old school split screen approach where you have two different apps open and you can kind of control how much of the screen each one takes up you got a bar down the middle you can drag and then you can also have some apps open in an app drawer that you can swipe on off the screen that was the default multitasking mode on the iPad for years some people still prefer that but the newer more flexible and Powerful way to use multiple apps on the iPad is with Stage manager which gives you unparalleled flexibility and control over where windows and apps are placed and it will actually let you have up to four different windows open at a time per stage on your iPad screen itself and then if you have an external monitor hooked up you can have an additional four windows open up on that so you could have a total of eight windows open with Stage manager four on the iPad screen and four on the external display and it's my preferred way of working with multiple apps on the iPad because it lets you be more efficient organized and productive versus split view in my opinion to enable stage manager you're going to open up settings go to multitasking and gestures and switch from split view and slide over to Stage manager or you can also go to control center and add stage manager as an option there so that when you swipe down from the top right right corner there's a button that lets you turn stage manager on and off you'll also be able to Long tap on that button and turn off your recent apps from the Le hand side of the screen or the dock down on the bottom of your screen as well with Stage manager on it's going to be a more mac-like experience where you can move Windows around resize them more or less however you'd like them to appear and if you're wondering if your iPad is compatible it's only an option on recent pros and recent airs specifically the third gen 12.9 in iPad Pro or lat the first gen 11-in iPad Pro or later or the fifth gen iPad Air now if you want to maximize your available screen real estate there's basically three things you can do with Stage manager number one you can turn off your recent apps over here that shelf or you can turn off the dock basically have both of those hide but even more effective than that the way to really juice how much you can fit on the screen is to go to settings display and brightness scroll down to display zoom and you can change that from default to more space so when I hit done I'm going to say use more space my iPad is going to take a second to think about it and it's going to come back and I'm going to have a lot more room to work with in fact this layout here is the same three pane layout I showed you earlier and you can actually see how much more room there is in the gutters around these windows that's how much extra room I got with display Zoom turned to more space the other thing you can do is simply plug in an external display using an external monitor like the studio display has really opened up A Whole New World of productivity for me as an iPad User now we're going to get to optimizing the best feature in stage manager on the iPad in just a second but first let me thank today's sponsor paperlike if you don't already own a paperlike screen protector get one not only does it reduce glare which is a huge benefit in my office with the huge window next to me but it also reduces fingerprints which is great and I know my iPad setup wouldn't feel complete without it it's almost as good as nitro coffee which if you're me is really saying a lot and you can check it out using the link in the description now for me the main benefit of stage manager is not that it automatically organizes and cleans up my setup that's admittedly really nice but the big benefit for me is that I'm able to group apps together by task for quick access so I can store them away I can bring them back and I can keep all the apps that I know I'm going to want to use together bundled so I don't have to worry about managing them all separately and the reason that I feel like stage manager is a game changer and I'll remind you I've been a fan of it since it was announced even though a lot of people really poo pooed it is because it streamlines my work and it enhances my focus I don't have to dip out of what I'm doing to switch context I can quickly jump into content creation mode or research mode or entertainment mode without having to think too much about it so instead of just opening up apps and kind of grouping stuff together randomly just whatever pops into your mind it's a much better idea to group apps together based on a comp in a specific task like here I had Safari open I was doing some research and I had a main app that I was typing in for an outline I was also taking some notes over in this other instance of Apple notes so for instance you could group all your project management apps together all your content creation apps together all your social media apps together and the easiest way to do that is to launch an app and then drag another app out into the stage with it then when you switch to another group of apps those will stay grouped together alternatively you can go up and tap on the three dots at the top of any of your windows and say add another window which will open up all your recent apps for you to select another window which is nice of course but an even faster shortcut would be Globe control up which will do the exact same thing now Apple recently updated stage manager to be able to Quick pair two different apps or windows together and what you do is grab the top of an app and tap on an icon and then boom those apps are instantly paired if you'd rather use a keyboard shortcut which I recommend learn learning because that can save you even some more time you can also just shift and tap or shift and click to do the exact same thing now one of the ways to maximize stage manager is to keep in mind that you can have four windows open not four apps but four Windows basically you could have four instances of the same app open on your screen at the same time so I have Apple notes open here and if I want to I can drag out several of these notes and have them all on my screen at once another way that I could easily bring up another instance of the same app would be to long press on the icon in the dock and tap show all windows which brings up a plus icon which lets me then open a new instance personally I find that to be a little bit cumbersome though and I much prefer to just hit that globe and down arrow key which brings up the same interface and makes it a lot faster now once you've got your apps all sorted into the proper groups it's very easy to switch between them but there's multiple ways you can take your cursor and slide over past the side of the screen and you'll see that your recent apps are going to pop pop up and you can easily just tap to open up a new group that's nice but I also like using a three-finger swipe to go back and forth between my different apps and app groups very easily also for multitasking you can just swipe your finger across the bottom of your screen and it basically does the same thing as a three-finger Swipe by this point you're probably familiar with the three-finger swipe up install which is going to bring up all your apps your multitasking menu and if you're a Mac User you're probably used to using the command tab shortcut to very quickly find whatever the app is that you want to switch to and switch that way now that method is great for jumping into and out of stages but let's say you've got four apps open and it's getting a little busy and you want to flip through those with a keyboard shortcut you can just use Globe Tilda or back quote key and you can run through those really quickly that way as well and if you ever forget these keyboard shortcuts it's really easy to figure out what they are whatever app you're in just hold down the command key and you'll surface the available keyboard shortcuts now one really useful stage manager tip that I use all the time to snipe one app out of one stage and bring it into another is to bring up that shelf with my recent app groups and then on a big app Group instead of tapping on that group to switch to it I can tap on any of the Little icons in that group and then bring out a particular window and drop it into the stage now the biggest thing to realize about using stage manager with an external display like the studio display I'm showing off in this video is that tapping and already open apps icon in the dock of either the iPad or the external monitor will move that already open app to the display that you tapped on so for instance if you have Apple notes open on the studio display and then you tap on the Apple notes icon in the dock on your iPad it's going to move the Apple notes window down to your iPad which is actually useful knowledge for this setup because then you can use your apple pencil to make a handwritten note or to sketch something out and then tap on that icon on the studio display to move it back up for reference while you do something else on your iPad and as a general rule of thumb I like to keep apps that I might use the apple pencil with parked on my iPad display right in front of me on the magic keyboard so it's quick and easy to access good for editing photos with the apple pencil for instance then you can kick it back up to the other display if you want to use a mouse and a bigger screen so something like free form is often open down on my iPad while I've got Safari or apple music or Final Cut Pro or something else up on the big display or sometimes it's nice to just keep your iPad desktop open and free kind of use it like a dashboard with those widgets so you can change your music right there or jump into a recent note or maybe activate a shortcut without a doubt stage manager has absolutely been an upgrade for me in my iPad experience and hopefully you've picked up some tips and some ideas from watching this video that can make it a huge upgrade in your life and work as well speaking of huge upgrades make sure to check out the course 30% off one of the students recently called it lifechanging if you haven't yet support our sponsor grab yourself a paper like personally endorsed by me I really love paper leg screen protectors make sure to check out the newsletter as well comes out every Friday packed full of useful information for Apple Fans and I'll catch you in the next video latersingle centered app two apps side by side three columns four columns four quadrants overlapping but partially hidden with one focus app over on the right an app above to type in and an app below to write in four on the iPad four on the external monitor hey it's Chris and as you can see multitasking on the iPad has gotten very good very flexible very powerful and today I want to help you master multitasking on the iPad with Stage manager and just as a side note I actually put this whole video together I did the writing research organization brainstorming outlining all of the above and more together using an iPad with Stage manager at my desk with an external monitor heads up before we get started my learning to be productive course is 30% off for a very limited time it's linked up down below more on that later just a little clarification before we get any further when we talk about multitasking what we're really talking about most of the time is accomplishing one task or monotasking using multiple apps so in the real world you actually get more done when you're very focused on accomplishing something in particular which yeah can sometimes require more than one app now when it comes to using multiple apps at the same time on the iPad there's two flavors that you can choose from there's the old school split screen approach where you have two different apps open and you can kind of control how much of the screen each one takes up you got a bar down the middle you can drag and then you can also have some apps open in an app drawer that you can swipe on off the screen that was the default multitasking mode on the iPad for years some people still prefer that but the newer more flexible and Powerful way to use multiple apps on the iPad is with Stage manager which gives you unparalleled flexibility and control over where windows and apps are placed and it will actually let you have up to four different windows open at a time per stage on your iPad screen itself and then if you have an external monitor hooked up you can have an additional four windows open up on that so you could have a total of eight windows open with Stage manager four on the iPad screen and four on the external display and it's my preferred way of working with multiple apps on the iPad because it lets you be more efficient organized and productive versus split view in my opinion to enable stage manager you're going to open up settings go to multitasking and gestures and switch from split view and slide over to Stage manager or you can also go to control center and add stage manager as an option there so that when you swipe down from the top right right corner there's a button that lets you turn stage manager on and off you'll also be able to Long tap on that button and turn off your recent apps from the Le hand side of the screen or the dock down on the bottom of your screen as well with Stage manager on it's going to be a more mac-like experience where you can move Windows around resize them more or less however you'd like them to appear and if you're wondering if your iPad is compatible it's only an option on recent pros and recent airs specifically the third gen 12.9 in iPad Pro or lat the first gen 11-in iPad Pro or later or the fifth gen iPad Air now if you want to maximize your available screen real estate there's basically three things you can do with Stage manager number one you can turn off your recent apps over here that shelf or you can turn off the dock basically have both of those hide but even more effective than that the way to really juice how much you can fit on the screen is to go to settings display and brightness scroll down to display zoom and you can change that from default to more space so when I hit done I'm going to say use more space my iPad is going to take a second to think about it and it's going to come back and I'm going to have a lot more room to work with in fact this layout here is the same three pane layout I showed you earlier and you can actually see how much more room there is in the gutters around these windows that's how much extra room I got with display Zoom turned to more space the other thing you can do is simply plug in an external display using an external monitor like the studio display has really opened up A Whole New World of productivity for me as an iPad User now we're going to get to optimizing the best feature in stage manager on the iPad in just a second but first let me thank today's sponsor paperlike if you don't already own a paperlike screen protector get one not only does it reduce glare which is a huge benefit in my office with the huge window next to me but it also reduces fingerprints which is great and I know my iPad setup wouldn't feel complete without it it's almost as good as nitro coffee which if you're me is really saying a lot and you can check it out using the link in the description now for me the main benefit of stage manager is not that it automatically organizes and cleans up my setup that's admittedly really nice but the big benefit for me is that I'm able to group apps together by task for quick access so I can store them away I can bring them back and I can keep all the apps that I know I'm going to want to use together bundled so I don't have to worry about managing them all separately and the reason that I feel like stage manager is a game changer and I'll remind you I've been a fan of it since it was announced even though a lot of people really poo pooed it is because it streamlines my work and it enhances my focus I don't have to dip out of what I'm doing to switch context I can quickly jump into content creation mode or research mode or entertainment mode without having to think too much about it so instead of just opening up apps and kind of grouping stuff together randomly just whatever pops into your mind it's a much better idea to group apps together based on a comp in a specific task like here I had Safari open I was doing some research and I had a main app that I was typing in for an outline I was also taking some notes over in this other instance of Apple notes so for instance you could group all your project management apps together all your content creation apps together all your social media apps together and the easiest way to do that is to launch an app and then drag another app out into the stage with it then when you switch to another group of apps those will stay grouped together alternatively you can go up and tap on the three dots at the top of any of your windows and say add another window which will open up all your recent apps for you to select another window which is nice of course but an even faster shortcut would be Globe control up which will do the exact same thing now Apple recently updated stage manager to be able to Quick pair two different apps or windows together and what you do is grab the top of an app and tap on an icon and then boom those apps are instantly paired if you'd rather use a keyboard shortcut which I recommend learn learning because that can save you even some more time you can also just shift and tap or shift and click to do the exact same thing now one of the ways to maximize stage manager is to keep in mind that you can have four windows open not four apps but four Windows basically you could have four instances of the same app open on your screen at the same time so I have Apple notes open here and if I want to I can drag out several of these notes and have them all on my screen at once another way that I could easily bring up another instance of the same app would be to long press on the icon in the dock and tap show all windows which brings up a plus icon which lets me then open a new instance personally I find that to be a little bit cumbersome though and I much prefer to just hit that globe and down arrow key which brings up the same interface and makes it a lot faster now once you've got your apps all sorted into the proper groups it's very easy to switch between them but there's multiple ways you can take your cursor and slide over past the side of the screen and you'll see that your recent apps are going to pop pop up and you can easily just tap to open up a new group that's nice but I also like using a three-finger swipe to go back and forth between my different apps and app groups very easily also for multitasking you can just swipe your finger across the bottom of your screen and it basically does the same thing as a three-finger Swipe by this point you're probably familiar with the three-finger swipe up install which is going to bring up all your apps your multitasking menu and if you're a Mac User you're probably used to using the command tab shortcut to very quickly find whatever the app is that you want to switch to and switch that way now that method is great for jumping into and out of stages but let's say you've got four apps open and it's getting a little busy and you want to flip through those with a keyboard shortcut you can just use Globe Tilda or back quote key and you can run through those really quickly that way as well and if you ever forget these keyboard shortcuts it's really easy to figure out what they are whatever app you're in just hold down the command key and you'll surface the available keyboard shortcuts now one really useful stage manager tip that I use all the time to snipe one app out of one stage and bring it into another is to bring up that shelf with my recent app groups and then on a big app Group instead of tapping on that group to switch to it I can tap on any of the Little icons in that group and then bring out a particular window and drop it into the stage now the biggest thing to realize about using stage manager with an external display like the studio display I'm showing off in this video is that tapping and already open apps icon in the dock of either the iPad or the external monitor will move that already open app to the display that you tapped on so for instance if you have Apple notes open on the studio display and then you tap on the Apple notes icon in the dock on your iPad it's going to move the Apple notes window down to your iPad which is actually useful knowledge for this setup because then you can use your apple pencil to make a handwritten note or to sketch something out and then tap on that icon on the studio display to move it back up for reference while you do something else on your iPad and as a general rule of thumb I like to keep apps that I might use the apple pencil with parked on my iPad display right in front of me on the magic keyboard so it's quick and easy to access good for editing photos with the apple pencil for instance then you can kick it back up to the other display if you want to use a mouse and a bigger screen so something like free form is often open down on my iPad while I've got Safari or apple music or Final Cut Pro or something else up on the big display or sometimes it's nice to just keep your iPad desktop open and free kind of use it like a dashboard with those widgets so you can change your music right there or jump into a recent note or maybe activate a shortcut without a doubt stage manager has absolutely been an upgrade for me in my iPad experience and hopefully you've picked up some tips and some ideas from watching this video that can make it a huge upgrade in your life and work as well speaking of huge upgrades make sure to check out the course 30% off one of the students recently called it lifechanging if you haven't yet support our sponsor grab yourself a paper like personally endorsed by me I really love paper leg screen protectors make sure to check out the newsletter as well comes out every Friday packed full of useful information for Apple Fans and I'll catch you in the next video later\n"