Readdle’s new drag-and-drop feature shows how Apple could improve multitasking on the iPad

Readdle is a developer known for its productivity apps like Documents, PDF Expert, Scanner Pro, and Spark. Today the company announced an interesting update to those apps, which adds the same kind of drag-and-drop features for managing files on a traditional desktop computer to its iPad apps.

The drag-and-drop function works between Readdle’s own apps while running in split screen, but it’s pretty neatly done. Files can be dragged from Documents straight into an email in Spark, or a PDF that your boss sent to you can be dropped into PDF Expert to edit before you send it back.

Unfortunately, the drag-and-drop features only work between Readdle’s apps. So if you use, say, Outlook for email, you’re stuck attaching things the old-fashioned way (which on iOS, can sometimes be a bit of a pain). As a whole, the implementation really does feel like the sort of thing that would be great for Apple to implement on an OS level, especially as the company continues to push the iPad as a productivity tool.

Coincidentally, MacStories recently mocked up a concept of its iOS 11 wish list, which largely centered around imagining exactly this sort of feature, so there’s definitely some demand out there for something like this.

Readdle also released a new version of Documents today alongside the drag-and-drop update, which adds a new design, better media features, and the option to edit documents stored in the cloud without downloading them first.

The drag-and-drop update (along with the new version of Documents) should be rolling out to the App Store today.