The date and time on the lock screen have bold text and display the date above the time to match iOS 16, but lacks the customization features, which were later added in iPadOS 17.
On iPads with Apple A12X Bionic, Apple A12Z Bionic, Apple M1 and Apple M2 processors, Stage Manager displays up to four apps at a time in adjustable windows. In addition, on iPads with Apple M1 and later, external displays are now driven using Stage Manager instead of screen mirroring, enabling display scaling on external displays.
On iPads with Apple M1 processors and later, and iPad Pro 11-inch with Apple A12X Bionic and A12Z Bionic processors,[10] Display scaling mode allows more view space in apps by increasing the pixel density of the display.
On the iPad Pro 12.9-inch (5th generation) and (6th generation) with Liquid Retina XDR display, the iPad can be used in "Reference Mode" for color-graded work. This extends to Sidecar, as long as the Mac being connected to has Apple Silicon.
As with iOS 16, some already supported languages have received additional voices (including "Novelty" voices for English), and voices and support have been added for the following languages:
Touch ID, Face ID or passcode is now required to view the Hidden and Recently Deleted albums, unless the user turns this off in Settings.
Photos can now detect duplicate photos or videos. The user can choose to delete the duplicates or to merge them, so that the device retains the higher quality photo with relevant data from the duplicate(s).
iPadOS 16's Stage Manager feature has been criticized by various sources for only being supported by certain iPad models with an M1 chiporM2 chip owing to strict performance requirements. In an interview with TechCrunch, Craig Federighi explained: “It’s only the M1 iPads that combined the high DRAM capacity with very high capacity, high-performance NAND that allows our virtual memory swap to be super fast”.[11] It was later discovered that the feature is disabled for older devices by an internal setting.[12] Due to criticism, a single-screen version of Stage Manager was added on 2018 and 2020 iPad Pros in iPadOS 16.1 beta.[13]Apple later provided a statement to Engadget, stating that “…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”.[14]
External display support for Stage Manager on M1 iPads was delayed until further notice by Apple due to instability, and was brought back in the iPadOS 16.2 update.[15][16][17]
Stage Manager was also criticized for being "hard to use" and some reviewers and critics called the feature "fundamentally misguided".[18]
The lack of iOS 16's lock screen customization features was also criticized by reviewers such as David Pierce from The Verge.[19] iPadOS had a hidden lock screen customization app named PosterBoard which included the iOS 16’s lock screen customization features in iPadOS 16 Beta 1.[20]
iPadOS 16 requires iPads with an A9orA9XSoC or later, which means it drops support for the iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 4, both with an A8orA8X SoC. This also marks the second time Apple has dropped support for older 64-bit iPads. The iPad (5th generation) is the only supported iPad without Apple Pencil support. Alongside dropping support for the iPad Mini 4, the iPad Mini (5th generation) is the only supported iPad with the exclusive 7.9-inch display.
The first developer beta of iPadOS 16 was released on June 6, 2022. The first public release, iPadOS 16.1, was officially released on October 24, 2022.
