Using an iPad as a Writing Computer in 2026 (iPadOS 26 Changes Everything)
I’m a big fan of the iPad as a writer. It’s a little aspirational—I would love to travel more than I do—but having an ultra-portable, capable machine that I can tote around with little effort and start writing in some distant coffee shop strikes a chord with me. However, like many iPad users, my love for the platform was tempered. The hardware is incredible, but the software came with real compromises. When iPadOS 26 was announced in the Spring of 2025, I was excited. It looked like many of those compromises were about to be fixed.
For me, iPadOS 26’s most important improvements are in the windowing system. You can now have three or even four apps on the screen at once. The point is the added versatility, not that you necessarily have to do it this way. I use Obsidian for writing my blog posts. Shrinking the app to a smaller portion of the iPad’s screen works really well with Stage Manager, letting me flip between Squarespace’s app, ChatGPT, and Safari in a small pane to the left. I can also have a YouTube Picture-in-Picture playing the Obsidian Soundfield channel (no relation to the Obsidian app) in the corner with the dock fully visible.
If all that on one small screen is too compact for you, the external monitor support on the iPad is fantastic. I currently have mine connected to a 32” monitor with YouTube on the iPad screen itself, and Obsidian open in a window on the monitor, alongside ChatGPT (for proofreading my posts).
When the writing is done, the iPad shines in new ways. There is the new phone app, which I use all the time. I no longer need to reach for my phone to make a call. Large downloads and file transfers now run in the background (before, if you shifted a working app to the background, the work would pause or worse, you’d have to start over).
The Apple Pencil Pro is a joy to use as an input device, but I never use it for my fiction writing per se. It’s a tool I use for taking notes during meetings, or writing down my thoughts before giving a presentation at work. Sometimes I’ll use it to sign the odd PDF. It’s really nice, but not a writing essential.
As a writer, the iPad is almost a complete package. I say almost because, thanks to Squarespace’s poor iPad support, I still need a laptop. You do not want to try building a Squarespace website in their iPad app, or in Safari. I wish I could say that the iPad app was useful after you got your website up and running. Unfortunately, even then it falls flat. To this day, I still don’t know how to add a web link in a blog post using the Squarespace iPad app.
Squarespace just needs to invest more in the app, and that may not be a priority for them. They may be giving it just the attention it deserves, given how many (or few) people try to use it. It’s disappointing, but understandable. If you find yourself feeling the same way, leave a negative (but constructive and polite) review. Maybe there’s enough of us that they’ll give it some attention.
Another caveat to all of this is that I don’t have a YouTube channel and I don’t plan to change that anytime soon. If you’re looking at using an iPad as your primary machine for growing your brand, and you want to leverage YouTube, make sure you understand the video recording and editing workflow first.
If you don’t have an iPad already, look at the iPad Air first. Don’t get me wrong—I love my iPad Pro. That said, I didn’t need a machine this powerful. I paid a premium for a thinner, lighter device with a better screen. I don’t regret it, and my goal is to make this device last for several years. Still, that’s the trade off. An iPad Air can do literally everything I described above.
IPadOS 26 didn’t make the iPad perfect, but for enthusiasts like me, it breathed new life into the platform and left me excited for the future. If you’ve dismissed the iPad as a writing platform, it’s time to take another look.