New Sidebar Enhancement on the iPad

In this video, we’re going to take a look at what Apple calls a new enhancement to iPadOS – the sidebar. With the sidebar, what Apple is doing is building a consistent look or feel across different apps, much like what we have on the Mac. On the Mac, when we open up our Photos app, we have a sidebar on the left side to choose our different albums.

If we go into a Finder window, we can browse the different files; we have a sidebar in that Finder window. Well, we have the same thing on the iPad. Now let’s take a look at this new sidebar. Let’s go to my iPad.

Let’s go and open up my Photos app. You’re going to see on the left side of my Photos app; I have a sidebar. With this sidebar, what I’m able to do is select my different albums. So if I swipe up here, I can select my videos or myself fees. I swipe up further. I have my shared albums here. This is the new sidebar what Apple calls an enhancement to iPadOS. Let’s take a look at the Files app. I’m going to press in on the Home button here, and now I’m going to go to my Files app.

You’re going to see; I have a sidebar again. I can go to my favorite folders. I can go to different locations. Now, depending on the app, the sidebar can be hidden. You’re going to see, we have this icon here, what this icon does when I tap on it, as it hides the sidebar. So I’m going to tap on it. The sidebar is hidden. I tap on it again. It shows. Also, when it is hidden, I’m going to hide it again; what I’m able to do is, I’m able to swipe to the right from the left edge here. And when I do, I get my sidebar. When I use this technique, I swipe over to the right from the left edge; the sidebar is what I would call a temporary sidebar.

I tap outside here. You’re going to see that the sidebar disappears. How do I get it back again? I go over to the left edge, swipe to the right. And it shows. If I want to show up permanently again, I no longer want to hide it. What I need to do is I need to go to that icon in the upper left-hand corner.

Well, if we look, that icon isn’t there. Well, what I have to do is I have to tap outside here to hide that sidebar. And then, I tap on this icon here to show it. We have the same thing in the Photos app. You’re going to see that this is pretty consistent. I go over to my Home button here to get to my home screen.

I tap on the Photos app. We have this icon here. I tap on it to hide it, tap on it again to show it. If it is hidden, I swipe over to the right to show it. I tap on any one of my photos, and it hides it again. Let’s go and take a look at my Pages app. I’m going to press in on the home button here, and now I swipe over to the left, and we’re going to go to pages again.

When I’m looking at all of my documents, I have my sidebar again, I can go and hide it, and I can go and show it by swiping to the right from the left edge. Tap anywhere to hide it again; tap on the icon to show it. And now I’ll no longer be hidden. When I’m in portrait mode, I’m going to rotate my iPad towards portrait.

The sidebar is hidden. So now, what I need to do is I need to go to the left edge here. And then I swipe over to the right. We have our sidebar. So it is always hidden when we are in portrait mode. But then when I go back to landscape mode, as long as I’m showing my sidebar, which I am here, it’s going to show.

Now you can see that the sidebar has been pretty consistent across three different Apple apps. Let’s look at it in the calendar app. It’s going to be slightly different. Now I go back over to my home button, and then I swipe over to the left. And we go over to calendar. When I tap on this again, I do have a sidebar, but the way that I showed is by tapping on one of these icons here in the upper left-hand corner.

So let’s go and tap on the calendar icon. When I tap on that, the sidebar shows for my different County. Let’s go and tap on the inbox here. This is all my invitations. Again, we can see what I’m looking at. My sidebar does not have any invitations here. If we go over to the list view, I can see all the different events in a list view in my sidebar to hide the sidebar and the calendar.

I tap on any one of these icons again to hide it. And now it is hidden. We still have that sidebar buddy behaves a little bit different with the calendar app. So that’s a look at the new sidebar on the iPad; Apple is calling the sidebar an enhancement. What they’re doing is they’re building a consistent look or feel across different apps this way.

When you open up a brand new app, you’ll already know how to get around that app because you’re going to see their sidebar on the left side. So that’s a look at the new sidebar enhancement on iPadOS 14.