2. The multitasking bar

Let's take a look at another important function of the Home button.

Press it twice in quick succession to reveal the iPad's multitasking bar. This multitasking

bar is an important way to get around more quickly on your iPad. Get into the habit of

using it and you'll find your iPad easier to control.

Using this bar, you can switch to a different app while the current one remains in memory

in the background, meaning that it doesn't quit, but rather enters a kind of suspended

animation.

We'll see how that works. So I select the Notes app. We move to that. Double-tap on

the Home button. Let's move to the iPad app. It switches over.

Go back to the Home screen, double-tap, and there is our multitasking bar.

One other nice thing that you can do from here is as we tap and hold on an app, all

the apps start wiggling and you see that little red button with the Minus sign in it. That

means that you can quit apps from here simply by tapping on the Minus sign.

So we'll quit the Calendar app by tapping on that button. To return the icons to their

normal behavior, just click on the Home button.

Multitasking controls If you swipe this bar from left to right,

you'll eventually see a set of controls. The appearance of the first button depends on

how you've configured the side switch options in the general setting screens.

How do you configure the side switch? Go to Settings, General, Use side switch to:

choose either Lock Rotation or mute.

If you've configured the side switch so that the iPad mutes when you push the side switch

down, you'll see a rotation lock icon.

When this lock is engaged, the orientation of the iPad's screen won't change, regardless

of how you rotate the iPad. So currently, rotation is enabled. I tap that button and

now rotation is locked, just like using the side switch when that option is engaged.

If you've configured the side switch to lock rotation, the button which you use for muting

and unmuting your iPad will look like a speaker. And you can see that we have it unmuted. Tap

the button and now the sound is muted.

After this button you'll see a slider for adjusting the screen's brightness.

To increase the brightest, just slide the button to the right, and to decrease brightness,

slide it to the left.

Here you'll also find buttons for controlling the iPad app's playback, and possibly a button for choosing wireless devices to

play the iPad's audio using a technology called AirPlay, which we'll discuss elsewhere in

the course.

And finally, there is a slider for adjusting the iPad's volume.

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