Adding a floating tab bar
iPad is not the focus of this book. This is not because iPadOS is unimportant but because most, if not all, of the topics we discuss here are also suitable for iPadOS.
However, there are special features that are relevant to iPadOS that are worth mentioning. One of them is the float tab bar.
The tab bar has existed in iOS since its very beginning. It allows users to navigate between different sections of an app. In both iOS and iPadOS, the tab is located at the bottom of the screen. While it looks perfectly fine on small devices, a tab bar on big screens seems stretched and doesn’t use the large space.
One solution for handling navigation in a iPadOS is to implement a sidebar – a view on the side that displays the different sections of the app.
In iPadOS 18, the position of the sidebar changed, and it is now located at the top of the screen, floating over the app content. Not only that; the user can also transition between a tab bar...