Whereas Apple doesn’t outright say it, the iPad can be utilized as your on a regular basis pc as a substitute of a Mac in quite a lot of cases. These cases the place the iPad is unsuitable usually contain extra mundane however important duties, however it seems that Apple is slowly fixing these deficiencies in iPadOS–there’s a brand new function within the upcoming iPad OS 18 that’s fairly helpful.
Kaleb Cadle, who writes about Apple stuff (amongst different tech subjects) on ByteBits, discovered the ability to erase and format attached storage devices in the iPadOS 18 beta. The perform is within the Information app—faucet and maintain the exterior storage machine to see the Erase possibility, and then you definitely’ll have the choice to rename the machine and choose one in all three codecs: APFS, ExFAT, or MS-DOS (FAT). The choice was additionally found within the iOS 18 beta as effectively, according to MacRumors.
The iPadOS 18 beta contains the power to erase and format exterior storage gadgets.
Whereas the power to erase and format drives will not be one you employ regularly on an iPad (you in all probability don’t use it loads on a Mac, both), it’s a really helpful perform. It saves you from having to show to a Mac if you end up on this scenario. Cadle wonders if Apple will finally deliver different features from the Mac’s Disk Utility app over to the iPad, akin to Restore and First Assist–we definitely hope so.
Remember the fact that that is an iOS 18 and iPadOS 18 function, so it’ll solely be accessible on compatible devices—and could also be restricted to sure fashions with particular {hardware} necessities.