This is fairly new and VERY annoying. OFTEN I am in the middle of composing an email and suddenly the whole thing slips down to the bottom of the page where I can neither see it or retrieve it. Then sometimes a whole bunch of these mini pages appear randomly at the bottom. Or when I send a new version the incomplete version will be sent as well.
I can’t find any info about how to cope with this.
Judee
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
You have encountered the “Shelf” - this being a feature of the revised iPadOS multitasking environment.
iPadOS permits you to have multiple “instances” or windows 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.
For Mail, the shelf will have window for each open message draft or Mail App Window. Simply tapping a thumbnail will resume an individual draft - or return to the mail App window.
Individual items can be closed directly from the Shelf; just swipe the unwanted thumbnail off the top of the screen.
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:
You have encountered the “Shelf” - this being a feature of the revised iPadOS multitasking environment.
iPadOS permits you to have multiple “instances” or windows 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.
For Mail, the shelf will have window for each open message draft or Mail App Window. Simply tapping a thumbnail will resume an individual draft - or return to the mail App window.
Individual items can be closed directly from the Shelf; just swipe the unwanted thumbnail off the top of the screen.
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:
Mini duplicates of my iPad emails at bottom of page
