By @viticci
Publication Date: 2026-03-17 17:45:00
I wasn’t fully sure what to call this blog post, but I caught myself doing a few things on my iPad Pro today that I hadn’t previously mentioned on MacStories, and they seemed worthy of a mention here. Hence, the short blog post.
Let’s start with this screenshot:
You’re looking at a couple of things here. First up is the web browser, which is called Beam and is essentially a modern version of Arc, but reimagined for the modern era of iPadOS 26 and Liquid Glass. I’m not exaggerating when I say that Beam is one of the best iPad apps for power users I’ve tested in a while. Beam borrows a lot of ideas and conventions that were pioneered by Arc such as the design for Favorites at the top of a vertical tab bar, the ability to rename tabs, and a Command-K bar for quick actions, but it also infuses them with iPad-native touches that are entirely new. There are a lot of settings to tweak, keyboard shortcuts, support for the menu bar, and tons of context menus hidden behind long-presses, which I love. Even better, Beam comes with its own built-in AI assistant to “chat” with tabs, which is useful for summarizing or asking questions about webpages. You can choose to use it locally with Apple Intelligence, or plug in your own Google/Anthropic/OpenAI API keys.
The only downside: Beam is currently iPad-only and there is no iPhone or Mac version. The developer is working on an iPhone counterpart, which is good to hear. If you’ve been looking…
