Well, this is wild. A developer has managed to get iPadOS 26 booting on an iPhone 17 Pro Max, giving us an early, unofficial (and probably very unintended) look at Apple’s new desktop-style multitasking squeezed into a phone form factor.
The stunt comes from Reddit user TechExpert2910, who posted a photo showing off iPadOS 26’s brand-new floating windows system on the iPhone 17 Pro Max. Apps pop into proper resizable windows, and the macOS-like menu bar sits right at the top like it fully belongs there. X user Duy Tran also shared a demo video showing the appearance of iPad OS 26 on the 17 Pro Max. Honestly? It looks way smoother than you’d expect on a phone.
And while the iPhone’s tall aspect ratio and smaller screen size aren’t perfect for iPad OS, it can be plugged into an external monitor for a desktop-like experience without a Mac or a PC. That’s the point of this modification. Of course, trying this on your main phone would be far from ideal. But on an older iPhone you no longer depend on, it could actually be a fun way to squeeze some extra productivity out of it.
Now, before anyone gets ideas about turning their iPhone into a mini iPad, there’s a catch: Tran says the installation required an exploit Apple already fixed in iOS/iPadOS 26.2. In other words, this isn’t something the rest of us will be doing on a weekend.
Still, the footage makes one thing pretty obvious — these windowed multitasking tools are already running smoothly on current iPhone hardware. Whether Apple will ever flip the switch on them for regular, non-folding iPhones is a much bigger question.
For now, this might be the best preview yet of how Apple can bridge the gap between iOS and iPadOS, and how its long-rumored foldable might behave once it finally unfolds.
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(Sources: 1, 2)
