Stage Manager has been a controversial feature ever since it was announced. On iPadOS there was a lot of backlash due to it being bundled with, and a solution to, external display support. Eventually Apple relented and decoupled Stage Manager support from external display support bringing it to the A12Z iPad Pro (my iPad Pro, which I no longer have). The feature is a total rethink of how multitasking works with some major oddities. We all know what it is and how it works so I won’t go over that again here. Here’s why I think it’s so controversial.

“New Thing Syndrome”

So I’m not going to just shit on Stage Manager because it’s new. There were a lot of people who tried it out for a few minutes, didn’t like it, and never thought about it again, and I’m not one of those people. I’m actually going to take the time to try and understand the intention behind new features and understand where I want to leverage it, if I want to leverage it.

My Thoughts

Where I Like Using It

I like using Stage Manager. I actually use it almost 100% of the time on my laptop as I find it works really well on the smaller 15” display of my laptop and really cuts down on the clutter. I also will use spaces, but that’s when I really want a separation between tasks, a lot of times I’ll have Stage Manager activated even still. Most of the time, however, I just don’t want the clutter on my display so Stage Manager works for me.

Where I Don’t Like It

Well I definitely don’t like using it, funnily enough, on my iPad. The device it was really made for. When working on an external display—there are some times where I do that—it feels pretty much the same as using a Mac, just a little fiddlier. When using the iPad itself I use Split View and Slide Over almost exclusively. I use an 11” iPad Air M2 and it’s really just too small for Stage Manager to feel good. I don’t have a 13” iPad, but I imagine it would probably be better there.

Where It’s Middling

I think on an external monitor it’s not really needed per se. I have a 27” external monitor and I don’t think the extra fiddliness is really worth the cleaner desktop. I have a lot of room to spread out and throw my apps into a pile when on that monitor so I find myself turning Stage Manager off most times there. All in all I think Stage Manager works best on medium-sized displays of about 13”–16” too small and it’s cramped, too large and it feels empty.

Why I Think People Don’t Like It

Fiddliness

I’ve already touched on this before, but it’s just fiddly to use. It’s not the most elegant of solutions all the time, and it usually isn’t. There are some things about it that are pretty annoying, like how you can’t open apps onto the stage without creating a new “pile” of apps.

Conceptualization

Really I think there’s not a solid understanding of the feature in the public. Apple hasn’t really defined all of the terminology of the feature, which would help people to understand how the feature is supposed to work. Naming things like this is super important, which I touched on in another blog post. First, I’ve noticed that some people refer to each group of apps as a ‘stage’ but I’m pretty sure that there’s only the one ‘stage’ being the active view and then the apps are just grouped off to the side, but who knows, really. This lack of cluing on the feature’s various facets can lead to confusion. Confusion leads to frustration. Frustration leads to the Dark Side.

Improvements I Would Make

macOS

First I would bring over the iPadOS feature that allows you to bring an app into the active group of apps. Really that should be the default behavior and I’ve never understood why it isn’t, but whatever. Additionally, when you invoke Mission Control, there should be some sort of retention of the grouping you have set up. Right now it feels like all of the apps are just randomly strewn about. When you’ve got all your apps in a pile, you at least have the visual cue of the apps moving into Mission Control, but it doesn’t quite work as well with Stage Manager.

iPadOS

The most obnoxious thing about iPadOS and Stage Manager is that you’re not supposed to close the apps in the app switcher, but when you turn on Stage Manager, now all of the apps are visible there. It’s a little overwhelming, honestly. I think that there should be a clean slate visually when going into Stage Manager. The OS can keep all of the apps backgrounded, but I think only showing the apps you’ve brought to the stage or have moved off to the side would clean the whole thing up.

Closing Thoughts

Overall, I actually like Stage Manager, it’s a nice feature and it really cleans up the whole desktop when it’s needed. I find that there’s a sweet spot in display size when it comes to using the feature with some displays being either too big or too small. Do you like Stage Manager? Have you ever really used it? Let me know down below, on Mastodon, Threads, Bluesky, or email.