Stage Manager now available on non-M1 iPads, but removes external display support

For those who are using a non-M1 iPad, Stage Manager will now be available on their iPad, but of course, there’s also this one caveat that may be a big deal for some or not at all.

Stage Manager now available on non-M1 iPads

Because of the recent release of the latest iPadOS 16 developer beta, the M1 chip is no longer a requirement for using a Stage Manager, many can now use the trendy feature.

So the Stage Manager can now work with older models such as the 11-inch iPad Pro (1st generation and onwards) and 12.9-inch iPad pro (3rd generation and onwards). To be more specific, its the 2018 and 2020 models that use A12X and A12Z chips aside from the M1 chips.

I finally went ahead and *disabled* Stage Manager on my iPad Pro. For now.

As much as I love using 3-4 apps at once, the implementation just isn't there yet. Crashes every few minutes; hard to use multi-window for the same app; UI glitches everywhere.

I hope Apple delays this.

— Federico Viticci (@viticci) August 18, 2022

As mentioned a while ago, there’s a caveat to this, Apple removes the support of the feature for external display from all models because of the recent issues regarding the external display support of Stage Manager. The external display support is set to be re-introduced in an upcoming software update later this year which makes sense because Apple still needs more time to make it work.

Apple has Engadget a statement regarding this recent update:

We introduced Stage Manager as a whole new way to multitask with overlapping, resizable windows on both the iPad display and a separate external display, with the ability to run up to eight live apps on screen at once. Delivering this multi-display support is only possible with the full power of M1-based iPads. Customers with iPad Pro 3rd and 4th generation have expressed strong interest in being able to experience Stage Manager on their iPads. In response, our teams have worked hard to find a way to deliver a single-screen version for these systems, with support for up to four live apps on the iPad screen at once.

External display support for Stage Manager on M1 iPads will be available in a software update later this year.