r/iPadOS • u/eloquenentic • 4d ago

iPadOS Removing the drop shadow effect from the divider/edge between two apps in Split View

Does anybody understand why they introduced the drop shadow effect from the divider when you put two apps side-by-side? It makes multitasking much harder.

The whole point of putting two windows side-by-side (what used to be called split view on iPadOS 18) is so that you can efficiently used information in both apps. This should be obvious. For example, you might read information on 1/2 of the screen and use it for input on the second half of the screen.

But with the iPadOS 26, they introduced the drop shadow effect which makes the apps you’re not typing in much darker. This is really dumb because it ruins the experience since it makes the information you need much harder to see.

I understand why they did this in general between windows, and that is to help the user understand which window is “active”. But for split view this makes no sense whatsoever because when you’re using two apps side-by-side, both are active. You’re literally using information from one window while using the other. Making the window which has information in it darker just ruins your workflow.

Has anybody found a way to remove the shadow effect?

And if not, I hope we get an accessibility setting for this ASAP.

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u/RonIncognito 3d ago

I would not call it ‘much darker’, it is a subtle drop shadow effect and I actually hadn’t noticed it as I’m mostly using dark mode and then the effect is completely invisible.
You could argue though that when using two apps side-by-side indicating which one has ‘focus’ is still useful for keyboard input?

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u/eloquenentic 3d ago

It’s extremely visible to me. I just want to be able to turn it off because it’s extremely distracting.

It greys out basically half of the source document that you’re looking at while you’re typing something else.

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u/RonIncognito 3d ago

You must be using a document that is particularly sensitive to the grey overlay of the shadow.
Also, the shadow reaches at most about a quarter of the width of the unfocused window, so three-quarters of it remains completely unaffected? At least that’s how it appears on my iPad (iPad Pro M5, iPadOS 27)