Pop up small windows
Recently, once I have been using my email and / or safari, small windows appear at the bottom of the screen. I click to remove them but it’s annoying. Is there a way to stop these windows permanently appearing
iPad, 10
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You are apparently triggering the Mail Shelf - each thumbnail representing an open Mail window/view. For each of the thumbnail that you can see, representing an open email or draft message, each view can be closed by swiping off the top of the screen.
The “Shelf” is a feature of the heavily revised iPadOS15 multitasking environment. Unlike previous versions of iPadOS, multitasking features cannot be disabled.
iPadOS permits you to have multiple “instances” of the same App - each instance being self contained. The shelf, when triggered, shows a thumbnail of each running instance of an App.
For example, if you have three running instances of Safari, each with its own set of open tabs, you will see three thumbnails corresponding to each running instance of Safari - plus a button to open a new instance of Safari. Simply tapping a thumbnail will switch directly to that running instance of Safari. Each App - such as Mail, Safari, Notes, Calendar, etc. - has its own corresponding shelf.
Individual open instances of an App can be closed directly from the Shelf; just swipe the unwanted thumbnail off the top of the screen. Note however, that Multitasking and associated Shelf functions cannot be disabled.
This article from Appleinsider has a useful explanation of this new feature along with many of the updates to multitasking:
The iPad User Guide is also a rich source of frequently overlooked information. The Guide is available both online using a web browser (such as Safari), or as an Apple Books download: