Rotating from landscape to portrait orientation no longer provides full screen email in iOS26 Mail app for iPad.
iPad mini 5, iPadOS 26
I just found a workaround for the issue - not a fix, and not ideal, but it is helpful.
• switch the list view from “categories” to “All Mail”
• long press the message you want to read in full screen view - a menu appears
• select “open in new window”
Now you can read it in full screen! But there is no navigation to the next or previous email message from this new window.
You just have to close it and repeat for the next message that you want to see. Annoying, but useful in a way.
Please give feedback to Apple so they will understand how incredibly inconvenient this update to Mail is and hopefully fix it soon.
There is not an option for feedback for the Mail app. So I reported it through the iPad feedback link.
No traffic light signals visible or an x or any other clue as to how to close the window! Sure tapping around on top left eventually minimises, but this us sloppy work.
Oh yay, that does work. Tedious, but at least I can finally reply or forward. I’m using mail on iPad in landscape mode.
I have OS 26.1 and the same problem still exists. Very inconvenient!
The buttons in top left corner only appear if using windows mode. If using full screen for apps, mail navigation is cumbersome.
The problem with that is that you have to delete the message to get back to your list of messages.
Yes, this makes for an extremely inefficient user experience, seemingly with no satisfactory workaround. Super annoying.
iPad Mail is my primary email environment, and until installing iPadOS 26 last night, I could zip through large numbers of new messages in portrait mode with full-screen message display, navigate right there to next or previous message, and after moving each message to Trash or another folder directly in that view, automatically see the next message full-screen.
iPadOS 26 completely breaks that use case and has me wishing I could revert to iPadOS 18.7 until this is fixed. Foolishly and regrettably, however, I did not run a backup right before installing iPadOS 26. I really hope they fix this for a 26.1 release, based on product feedback some of us have submitted.
How to see iOS26 mail on iPad full screen in portrait mode?
