This is Technology Bytes, Episode 6 for April 16th, 2023.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share my brief insights on an interesting technology.
My name is Joel.
Enjoy, and here we go.
Today I want to talk about Stage Manager, which is something Apple has done on the iPad Pros and on iMacs and MacBook Pros and MacBook Airs.
It’s really a new system of multitasking, as it were.
It actually gives the iPad, for the first time, a windowed environment, as it were, to be able to look at multiple apps and know what’s open and not just run everything full screen.
And on the iPad and the iMacs, I mean on the iMacs or the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, those types of computers, you’ve always had a multi-window environment.
But on the smaller screens, and I have a MacBook Air, then having the Stage Manager so you can see the other apps but they’re not necessarily overlapped, lots of ways you can use Stage Manager, and I’ll go into that in more detail in this microcast.
To turn Stage Manager on on a Mac, you would go to the menu bar and in the top right corner, right next to the data, looks like two little switches.
And that gets you into focus modes and display modes and those kind of things.
And in that environment, in that drop down from clicking on that little icon, you have a button there that says turn Stage Manager on and you can also turn it off.
And then there’s a couple ways you can set it up.
You can have your dock showing or not showing.
You can actually have the recent apps in Stage Manager showing on the side if you would like, while the main app is focused front and center on your screen.
You can also turn those off and then if you want to get to the apps that are open, you could on your trackpad or magic mouse, you can kind of slide from the edge.
And then you can see those apps pop in that are also open and have them trade places with the active app.
Similarly, you can do that on the iPad.
On the iPad, you would go into control center by swiping down from the top right when you’re in landscape mode.
And then you can turn on Stage Manager there.
And the similar thing can happen.
You can have the app show on the left or you can have them not show and then swipe in from the left hand side of your iPad and have those apps show at that point.
In my personal use on my iPad and on my iMac and on my MacBook Air, so every environment that I use Stage Manager, I always have the apps visible.
I want to know what’s there, I want to be able to see where I’m going and I have enough space on that 12.9 inch iPad Pro to use the app that I have front and center without feeling constricted even on that smaller screen environment.
On the iPad, you can only have four secondary apps on the Stage Manager.
It’s really four secondary desktops because you can have multiple apps in each one of those environments as you want.
So for instance, I have my Bible and my reading plan on the same, as it were, desktop so that when I have those up, I’ve got two windows there.
I’ve got the Bible and the reading plan so I can go back and forth between them.
Often times I’m only using one app in the environment so I most often have the four most recent apps on my left.
That changes as you go, as you open an app and as you minimize it or go to another app, the last four that you had open will be on your Stage Manager screen.
Similarly, on the Macbook Air and the iMac, you have that same environment and it’s really your screen real estate that lets you see how many different apps you can have in the Stage Manager environment.
Most of the time, four is where you’re at.
Often times on my iMac, I think I can get five or six, but on my Macbook Air, almost always it’s four.
Because of the limited real estate on my Macbook Air, I usually use single apps.
On my iMac, I overlap because I have more screen there in my 24-inch iMac.
So that is the way I use Stage Manager and how I have it set up.
Another option that you have is in a multi-display environment.
So I was at the Apple Store the other day, hooked my iPad up to one of the new studio displays through the USB-C ports.
In that environment, I could have one set up on my iPad itself.
So I could have the active screen and then the four inactive screens on the left.
And on the secondary display, I could have a different active app and four secondary apps on the left in that environment as well.
So at that point, my iPad is running somewhere in the neighborhood of ten apps simultaneously and I can switch between those based on which ones need more real estate.
And keep the ones on the iPad that don’t need that much, maybe texting or some things like that.
And keep other ones, maybe email or browsers or something like that in the bigger screen.
And so that was really cool.
And while I don’t have a secondary monitor at the moment, that is probably how I would have used it if I had that.
You can do similarly on the MacBook Air if you hook that up to a secondary display.
I think I’ve mentioned in one of these podcasts up to this point that I really use three separate computers.
I use my iPad, I use my MacBook Air, and I use my iMac.
And I use them simultaneously with one keyboard and mouse.
So in that instance, I can have a different set of apps in Stage Manager running on each device.
And that makes it very, very useful.
In my day-to-day use, I keep Stage Manager always on.
I keep the apps always visible on the left.
And I use the size of the screen that is remaining for the app that I have active.
And I can change those sizes if I have multiple apps, they will overlap.
And that is an environment that works really well and makes me super productive on all of my devices.
So just a little additional background.
When Stage Manager came out, I automatically switched because I tend to try everything that Apple comes out with that’s new to see if it works for how I use my devices.
And I really like Stage Manager and how it works.
What I used to do on my iPad and on my MacBook Air is run every app full screen and I would have then what is in essence multiple desktops.
And there might be something on my MacBook Air that I would run in a windowed mode on a given desktop.
Maybe I’d have email and my texting and messages or something like that.
But almost always I would be running full screen and then use the gestures to move between the apps that I wanted to get to.
And that worked really well unless my apps were multiple desktops apart.
And then I would either have to swipe up and then go to that desktop and come back or I’d have to swipe multiple times to get where I wanted.
And I find that Stage Manager gives you the best of both worlds.
It lets you know what’s open.
You can get to an app very, very quickly.
And then you can use the majority of your screen real estate both on the iPad and on the MacBook Air and on your iMac for the apps that you want to look at at the time and need to use at the time.
So if you haven’t given Stage Manager a try, I think it’s worth the setup.
I think it’s worth the effort just to see if it works in your workflow.
And I think you might be pleasantly surprised.
You have been listening to the TechnologyBytes microcast.
Until next time, continue enjoying your technology.
