My iPad Air keeps getting hot when I use it

Things you can do to help with keeping the heat down of your iPad.

Try all of the following below:

Make sure that the display brightness is adjusted down for legibility, but isn’t so bright that it is adversely affecting battery life and creates extra heat inside of your iPad, either!

Try a hard reset of your iPad by holding down both the Home and sleep/wake buttons simultaneously until your iPad goes to black and restarts with Apple logo, then release the buttons.

Need to minimise as many active iOS/iPadOS processes as possible to keep battery and internal heat down!

Make sure you DO NOT have 20-30 OR EVEN MORE of active website tabs running in any running web browser.

If your iPad has been activated for iCloud, in the Settings App under iCloud, to the right, under iCloud Drive, tap iCloud Drive and make sure Safari is turned off for saving Safari data to iCloud Drive.

Also, under iCloud in the Settings App, in iCloud Drive, disable the saving feature for any other apps that you DO NOT want data being saved automatically to iCloud Drive.

OR turn off/disable iCloud and iCloud drive entirely if you do not use any iCloud functionality.

In Settings app, make sure Bluetooth is turned off when not in use.

In Settings app, under the Safari settings panel, tap the panel and in the right hand window, turn off/disable Safari Suggestions.

In Settings App, under the General settings panel, tap the panel, in the right hand column, tap Spotlight, then turn off/disable Siri Suggestions.

Make sure there are no long running iCloud services trying to constantly update or you have an iCloud device trying to backup while you are actually using the iDevice (normally, iCloud backups only take place while your iDevice is locked, in sleep mode, WiFi active, and your iDevice is plugged into wall power).

In the Settings App under the General tab, to the right under Spotlight search, try disabling the search under apps that really do not need a search, like some games, remotes, apps that really do not need to be searched, etc., to reduce the list for Spotlight to search.

In the Settings App under the General Tab, in the right column, look for Background App Refresh and turn the global setting to "OFF” if you don't want ANY apps to refresh in the background OR individually/selectively turn off Background App Refresh for those apps you feel don't really need any data refresh in the background.

Try turning on Reduced Motion.This is found in the Settings App in the General tab the left panel.In the right panel look under Accessibility, the look for Reduce Motion and toggle this feature "ON".

You should see an appreciable performance increase on all iPad models. Especially noticeable response improvement on older iPad models/

Make sure you do not have a lot of potentially background running apps running in the background in the iOS App Switcher.

Dbl click the Home button to check this.

Keep active App Switcher Apps to a comfortable minimum.

For older iPads (iPad 2,3, 4 or 1st gen iPad Mini models running iOS 9.3.5), 20 or less active apps should be fine. Ideally, 6-8 or less active background running apps, in the iOS App Switcher, is even better!

If you have a lot of apps still active, tap and hold a finger on one of the apps and slide your finger up to quit the app.If you can reach another app with another finger, you can quit more than one app simultaneously.

If you have the iOS Mail app set to automatically fetch mail at one of the default fetch time intervals, in the Settings App, under the Mail, Contacts, Calendar settings panel, tap this panel, in the righthand window, turn off/disable Push Mail and set fetching mail for either every hour or set for manual fetch only for all of your mail accounts.

In Settings app, Notifcations, minimise the amounts and methods of notifications you are getting from apps and reduced the amount of apps that you are getting notification from.

You do not need notifications from every single app on your iPad!

Some minority of user have been turning ON and leaving ON iCloud backups continuously backing up on a constant and daily basis. If you are one of these users, turn off iCloud backup and only turn this on to do daily backups either when you are not using your iPad for a prolonged period of time (like when you are sleeping), then turn iCloud backups OFF when actually using your iPad

OR

only perform your backups on a lesser time schedule.( like once a week, twice a week, once every two weeks, once a month, etc.)

After you have implemented some or ALL of these tips,

Try another hard reset of your iPad by holding down both the Home and sleep/wake buttons simultaneously until your iPad goes to black and restarts with Apple logo, then release the buttons.

Best of Luck to You!

iPads will get warm or hot if they are being used with power plugged into them as the battery is trying to charge/discharge at the same time.

Does your iPad just get warm or is it literally getting too hot to touch or hold?

Your iPad should not become uncomfortably hot whilst in use - and certainly not when idle.

You would be best advised to seek assistance directly from Apple Support. Your will find the Contact Support link at top-right of this page.

Alternatively, a visit to the Genius Bar at your local Apple Store will allow the technicians to inspect and test your iPad.

Before I answer that question, what is the storage capacity of your iPad and how much free data storage space is left inside of your iPad?

You can find this info in the Settings app, General settings panel > About...