How do I close full screen emails on iPad Air with iPadOS 26?

The arrow head icon only appears if you have Multitasking & Gestures set to Windowed or Stage Manager in Settings..

If you do, you can swipe down from the top of the screen, to bring down the menu bar, and the colored bubbles should appear on the left side of the menu bar. Tapping on them will enlarge them, and the green bubble is the you want to change the size of thew window. or then redone to close the email window entirely.

Fleur2 wrote:

Hi Phil0124,

I went back to try your steps again, and I believe what you are using to perform these options is an Apple Mac… not an iPad.

No, That is an iPad. I took the screenshot on a 2025 iPad running iPadOS 26, not a Mac. iPads on iPadOS 26 have the menu bar now. Again assuming you have the Multitasking option set to Windowed or Stage manager.

See Apple's own iPad screen shot from Work with multiple windows at once on iPad - Apple Support

I searched online, and iPad’s unfortunately don’t have a Menu Bar. when you swipe down, all we see are our notifications.

Then you are either not running iPadOS 26 or Multitasking is not set to Windowed or Stage Manager.

( It sounds like that would work great if we had access to it!) And swiping up only shows my opened window tabs grouped by type, like mail, or internet, but that grouping unfortunately don’t have any x options.

Swiping from the bottom should close the Mail app entirely if done in one quick motion. If done slowly it should make the dock appear. On the dock you can tap and hold on the Mail icon and it should make a new menu appear.

From there if you tap on Show all Windows it will open into a grid will open Mail windows. You can then close them by swiping each window up and off the screen.

Meanwhile, my list of ‘opened’ full screen emails is getting bigger, with no way to close them completely. Seems to really be a big bug for the iPad!

Any other suggestions ? Thanks

Check that your iPad is in fact running iPadOS 26, and that you have Multitasking and dock in the Settings app set to Windowed or Stage Manager.

You can swipe up from the bottom to bering up the Dock tap on the mail App to bring up the Window manager and select the main Mail app window from the thumbnails, or you can swipe down from the top of the screen to bring down the menu bar, and then use the colored bubbles to reduce or close the email entirely.

You can also use the Window menu from the menu bar, to Minimize, close or exit full screen.

Or you can drag the corners of the window to reduce it from full screen.

Having the same problem, literally the stupidest bug ever. My solution is to hit reply and then close the draft reply. There’s a “x” on a composing message but not a reading one.

Touching anywhere outside the open email window will minimize the email, no need to touch just the battery icon.

Apple, if you’re listening, please fix this change in 26 so it’s back to a single operation! Closing an open email in iPadOS versions prior to 26 was a one step operation, and now it requires two (minimize the email window, and swipe up to close the email instead of just swipe up in prior version).

Fleur2 wrote:

Hi, can you tell me how to minimize my expanded email message that I can’t close? I don’t see any options for this at the top or bottom, and using my fingers to reduce the size doesn’t work either thanks!

Tap at the very top of the page.

Idemps thank you for this, doing the steps you outlined worked for me. Hopefully Apple will come up with a more accessible/obvious way to quickly go from full screen opened email back to the inbox. This issue was driving me nuts.

Cheers.

That does not work for me. It's similar in behavior to what was previously suggested ("tap in the small area above the mail"). On my iPad this minimizes the mail, but it does not close it, and you'll eventually end up with a bunch of minimized mails.

I should add, that have text size set to largest possible size, and Bold Text is also turned on, as it's for a familiy member that has difficulties with their vision.

I do appreciate the follow-up though - thank you!

I'm not seeing any different behavior in 26.1 - it's the same thing: e-mail minimizes rather than closing a full-screen e-mail (by clicking on the desktop).

If only there was an 'X' in the top right corner...

I just started having this error after upgrading to 26.2.

Thank you for your suggested workaround, but it does not work. it performs the same as if one clicks anywhere off the opened email page, which then moves the email to the bottom of your email screen, as an opened email. It doesn’t actually close the email.

I hope that apple has a real fix to this soon!

I agree… super dumb bug !

I just tried your creative solution. Unfortunately, clicking on the forwarded message X only closes the forwarded version of the message. It doesn’t actually close the originally opened email - that still shows as open when you re-enter email on your apple tablet/phone. Dang

Hi, can you tell me how to minimize my expanded email message that I can’t close? I don’t see any options for this at the top or bottom, and using my fingers to reduce the size doesn’t work either thanks!

There is no icon that looks like diagonal arrowheads on my email, and I just updated to 26.2 this morning. Did you press something to get them to show? Is it possible to post a photo for comparison. Thanks!