iPad Stage Manager support

[JakubCZ]

Hello,

Will the v2 support stage manager on iPad? I tried V2, and for me the main issue was, that there is no support for zooming with mouse.

I also tried v1 while I had beta iPadOS which supported Stage Manager on second monitor and Affinity didn't use the external monitor fully.

 

Hope it will work, because I would like to travel to university just with iPad, and use it with external monitor and BT mouse and keyboard. That would allow me to leave the MacBook at home. If this would happen, I would definitely upgrade to v2, without it, I'm probably fine with v1.

 

Thanks for any comment!

[MikeTO]

Here's the FAQ on this topic

 

[walt.farrell]

On the other hand, I have Stage Manager enabled, and the V2 apps seems to be working quite fine, so I'm not sure what "being supported" means, exactly.

There is one issue with the "add window" button (looks like ... at the top middle of the screen) interfering with tapping/clicking some of the icons in the apps, but I haven't noticed any other issues.

[Stephen Bradley]

On 11/12/2022 at 5:50 PM, walt.farrell said:

On the other hand, I have Stage Manager enabled, and the V2 apps seems to be working quite fine, so I'm not sure what "being supported" means, exactly.

There is one issue with the "add window" button (looks like ... at the top middle of the screen) interfering with tapping/clicking some of the icons in the apps, but I haven't noticed any other issues.

Speaking just for me, “supported” would mean the ability to open full-screen on an external monitor in extended mode (not mirrored mode, because that doesn’t give me the full screen).  As i stands, the V2 only open in a scalable window. Ordering them to “full screen” actually makes them *shrink* which is objectively terrible. 

This is the feature that kept me from purchasing. 

[Mr.TightyPants]

For what it's worth, V2 is... janky with Stage Manager, as well. Obviously managing the windows works perfectly fine, however there's a SIGNIFICANT amount of lag when it minimizes into the Stage. Hopefully it'll get ironed out soon.

[iuli]

+1 for better iPad SM support. iPadOS 17 SM improvements would be useless with no 3rd party support, and Affinity is the only important developer on the iPad that offers no support for Stage Manager at all. The few predetermined sizes for the Affinity apps make SM quite difficult to use.

Please have in mind better iPad support. Kind regards/

[MacGenie]

I have just (2025-02-27) testet it with Sage Manager on M1 iPad and external 4K Display. Affinity Photo 2 and Designer 2 still needs to switch »off« »Present on External Displays« at preferences, Publisher 2 also works when that Button is »on«. 

But Fullscreen is STILL NOT working (V 2-6.1.). What a pity. Unlike Apple Pages, MS 365/Office or PDF-Expert it can neither use full screen (on 16:9 Display, tested with 4K) nor scale other windows sizes beyond 5:4 and 4:5 (iPad Size landscape/portrait).

Also a few Actions are not working with external Mouse/Trackpad and still needs touching, what is impossible on external Display.

When will they fix this PRO Feature?

Or is that a poor strategy to force using Desktop Mac/Win with Desktop App? I would also pay for it, because it makes my workflow unnecessary complicated.

[fde101]

On 2/27/2025 at 5:04 PM, MacGenie said:

is that a poor strategy to force using Desktop Mac/Win with Desktop App?

If that were the goal why would they bother releasing an iPad version at all?

There is probably some technical restriction with the way they developed the app which limits this or they probably would have opened it up by now.

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

17 minutes ago, fde101 said:

If that were the goal why would they bother releasing an iPad version at all?

There is probably some technical restriction with the way they developed the app which limits this or they probably would have opened it up by now.

But, the iPad versions in Affinity Suite is crippled in many ways compared with the desktop versions.

It seems that Serif Labs have lost a little interesting in the iPad platform (my personal feeling/view) - I may have wrong in some way…

[fde101]

2 hours ago, AffinityMakesMeWonder said:

But, the iPad versions in Affinity Suite is crippled in many ways compared with the desktop versions.

The iPad itself is quite crippled compared to a desktop/laptop:

• You can only install vendor-approved apps from the app store
• No alternative operating systems available
• No virtual machine hosting
• Limited options in terms of arranging multiple apps for simultaneous usage
• Limited options for on-device software development and automation
• Mostly locked-down filesystem complicates sharing of data between apps
• etc.

 

The iPad is particularly nice when paired with the pencil to use it for drawing tasks and the like, and the portability is certainly a nice thing, but serious computers are still best to use when trying to do serious work.  The iPad is more suitable as a companion to a real computer than as a replacement for one, and as long as it is as locked down as it is, I don't think that opinion will ever change for my part.

The version 1 iPad apps actually were a better fit for the platform than the version 2 apps are: the "puck" for simulating modifier keys is particularly stupid in the context of a tablet interface, and most of the changes that were made simply don't work as well for a tablet as what they had in version 1.

I suspect Serif was trying to move the interface in a direction that would make it easier for them to approach having greater parity between the iPad and Mac versions, but they did it rather poorly, and I think they need to reconsider how they handled this.  

In my opinion the current user interface of the iPad version is more important to fix than the lack of feature parity, but even better would be for them to fix both to the extent that it is reasonable to do so.  Some of the features of the desktop version (such as linked external files and support for PhotoShop plugins in Photo) may be impractical due to the locked-down nature of the platform, and Apple might throw a fit if they try to add scripting support (ECMAScript that they are working on adding to the desktop versions) to the iPad versions of the apps (they have rejected apps from being in the App Store over trying to add support for things like that), but many other things that are currently missing should certainly be possible to add.

[AffinityMakesMeWonder]

20 hours ago, fde101 said:

The iPad itself is quite crippled compared to a desktop/laptop:

• You can only install vendor-approved apps from the app store
• No alternative operating systems available
• No virtual machine hosting
• Limited options in terms of arranging multiple apps for simultaneous usage
• Limited options for on-device software development and automation
• Mostly locked-down filesystem complicates sharing of data between apps
• etc.

 

The iPad is particularly nice when paired with the pencil to use it for drawing tasks and the like, and the portability is certainly a nice thing, but serious computers are still best to use when trying to do serious work.  The iPad is more suitable as a companion to a real computer than as a replacement for one, and as long as it is as locked down as it is, I don't think that opinion will ever change for my part.

The version 1 iPad apps actually were a better fit for the platform than the version 2 apps are: the "puck" for simulating modifier keys is particularly stupid in the context of a tablet interface, and most of the changes that were made simply don't work as well for a tablet as what they had in version 1.

I suspect Serif was trying to move the interface in a direction that would make it easier for them to approach having greater parity between the iPad and Mac versions, but they did it rather poorly, and I think they need to reconsider how they handled this.  

In my opinion the current user interface of the iPad version is more important to fix than the lack of feature parity, but even better would be for them to fix both to the extent that it is reasonable to do so.  Some of the features of the desktop version (such as linked external files and support for PhotoShop plugins in Photo) may be impractical due to the locked-down nature of the platform, and Apple might throw a fit if they try to add scripting support (ECMAScript that they are working on adding to the desktop versions) to the iPad versions of the apps (they have rejected apps from being in the App Store over trying to add support for things like that), but many other things that are currently missing should certainly be possible to add.

 

• You can only install vendor-approved apps from the app store (here in Europe it’s OK to use alternative Appstores…
• No alternative operating systems available (why would we need other than MacOS or iPadOS?)
• No virtual machine hosting (wrong, at least here in Europe - no problem run Windows 10 on my iPad Pro with UTM)…
• Limited options in terms of arranging multiple apps for simultaneous usage
• Limited options for on-device software development and automation (almost everyone I know that has an powerful iPad also have an Mac/Macbook Pro - why run Xcode on iPad?)
• Mostly locked-down filesystem complicates sharing of data between apps (I can’t see any problem whatsoever to manage my files, both locally or my network drives or cloudfiles - now we talking just running Affinity Suite, not any advanced software)
  
   

[fde101]

4 hours ago, AffinityMakesMeWonder said:

why run Xcode on iPad?

I guess I come from the school where the development of a general-purpose operating system has at least two major milestones: first boot, and becoming self-hosting.

First boot means you make it all the way through the boot process and are able to do something useful with the system.

Self-hosting means that the operating system has all the tools and functionality required to build itself from its own source code, without needing to involve some outside system.

To my mind, a general-purpose operating system is not complete until it has all of the required tools to continue developing it on that operating system itself.

The fact that iPad OS and iOS have all of their development work done on macOS (or in some cases at least partially on other platforms) means they cannot be considered true general-purpose operating systems - they are embedded platforms which require outside support to maintain them.

As long as that continues to be the case this will always cause them, in my mind, to be lesser platforms than macOS or other "real" operating systems that provide the tooling to maintain their own futures.

 

4 hours ago, AffinityMakesMeWonder said:

almost everyone I know that has an powerful iPad also have an Mac/Macbook Pro

... and this also kind of makes my point.  If the iPad were truly a "desktop replacement" then why would this still be true after it has been on the market for as long as it has?

Sure, there will always be those who just need a web browser and a calculator or some such and who will do just fine with an iPad by itself... but for those who actually use technology to get real work done, an iPad isn't quite there yet.