Apple unveils iPadOS 14 with search and Apple Pencil upgrades

During its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday, Apple announced tons of new features for the iPhone coming in iOS 14. 

And, while a lot of those features will also be included on the iPad (such as pinning iMessages, adding widgets to the home screen, and more), the company announced a few additional features specific to its tablet in iPadOS 14.

From an all-new side bar to a redesigned Search tool, here’s everything that’ll be included in the new operating system. 

A useful Sidebar

iPadOS 14 makes it easier to find your way around apps with a new Sidebar tool. It’s included in apps such as Photos and Music, and allows you to access different features and sections by organizing all of your capabilities in one place. 

In addition to Photos and Apple Music, it’s also available on Files, Notes, and Calendar. 

Minimized call notifications

As with iOS 14, phone and FaceTime calls will no longer take up the entire display. That way, it won’t interrupt what you’re currently working on. Instead, a phone call or FaceTime call notification will appear at the top of the display as a banner, so you can quickly swipe it away or tap to answer it.

Redesigned search

With Universal Search, you can search for certain things within apps, different files on your iPad, and also launch web searches. All you have to do is type in whatever it is you’re looking for within the Search bar and it’ll launch your results. You can also access search from anywhere without having to leave the app you’re currently using. 

And, to help with search, Siri now appears at the bottom of the display when triggered. So, it won’t get in the way of whatever you’re currently looking at on screen.

Scribble with Apple Pencil

This year, a feature called “Scribble” is coming to iPad. 

You can handwrite in any text field and it’ll be converted to text. That way, you don’t have to tap on the keyboard, but can still rest assured that someone will be able to understand what it is you’re trying to say.

When taking notes, the Smart Selection feature uses on-device machine learning to identify handwritten notes from drawings. So you can select, copy, and paste handwritten text into another document as typed text. There’s also a shape recognition feature that allows you to draw “geometrically perfect” shapes and apply them when creating diagrams and illustrations in the Notes app.

As with iOS 14, the updated version of iPadOS 14 won’t be available until September, but you can still try it out once the public beta is released in July.