I’m working on a review of a cute little camera, the Kodak Charmera. It’s an adorable joy-packed tiny digital camera, but this post won’t be about it. Instead, it’s about the iPadOS 26 Files app, and how some extremely bad decisions derailed my day.
On macOS, if you want to view your photos, you can click one, press spacebar, and perform a quick look. You can then use the arrow keys to jump between photos to compare them quickly. On iPadOS 18, you could do this simply by tapping or clicking a photo in Files, regardless of where the file was. You could even swipe through them, making it easy to compare shots.
However, in iPadOS 26, tapping on a file won’t open Quick Look as expected. Instead, it will open the file in a separate app. For photos and PDFs, this is Preview. You can’t swipe through your shots, it takes longer to open, and you can’t get back to your other files quickly. I thought it would be as simple as deleting the offending app, but, no, the Files app will arbitrarily select a different app that might be able to handle the file type. It’ll be a random one. In one case, it opened a photo in a painting app that didn’t even display it. It just became impossible to review photos on my SD card.
Android lets you set default apps for every action like this. macOS does too. iPadOS 26, however, chooses them at random, doesn’t give you quick look previews, and feels awful to use. I found a clunky workaround, one that won’t force you to copy all your shots to your iPad, but it’s hardly ideal.
I’m guessing some manager who no one could say no to without risking their jobs is to blame for this idiocy. One of those people who never actually earned their role by making good decisions over a long career, but knew someone or had drinks with the previous manager. Because this is an asinine design, and I can’t imagine anyone in my profession making something like this. It opened a video in a PDF app, for fuck’s sake!
So here’s a workaround you can use until Apple fixes it, and, for now, the fix should make future photo reviewing easier as well.
Fixing Apple’s Bad Decisions
Fortunately, I did find a hacky workaround in my testing. When viewing files on an SD card, Apple—for no apparent reason—gives you fewer options than if you have downloaded the file from the SD card onto either iCloud storage (which also isn’t on the device), or onto the iPad storage directly. I found out this little tidbit through trial and error, because I did not want to write an article just complaining about Apple and I set out to find a solution. Once you copy a file from the external storage, or upload it to iCloud, you’ll be able to fix the issue, sort of.
Note the lack of “Open With” when the file is on the SD card
Here’s what to do:
- Download the file from the SD card that you want to open in Files, not an external app.
- Once it’s either in iCloud or directly in your iPad’s storage, find the file.
- Press and hold on it until a menu appears (or right/two-finger click if you’re using a pointing device).
- Select “Open With”
- Scroll down to the bottom of the list of apps. There you’ll see a “Quick Look” option
- Select that.
- Go back to your SD card or other external storage
- Tap any file of the same data type (photo, video, text file, etc)
- Notice that it now opens in Quick Look instead of another app
- Repeat for other file types
If you already have a matching file type downloaded on your device or in iCloud, you can simply use that. Otherwise, you’ll have to get the file off the SD card before you can just view it normally.
I cannot explain why Apple wouldn’t just let you make this a universal option, such as “Open all files in Quick Look” or why they don’t let you set this up with a file that’s currently in external storage. Why do you have to download it first? My best explanation includes carbon monoxide poisoning. Maybe Apple’s headquarters were built too close to a superfund site? Oh, wait. Maybe they should mandate more remote work after all. Regardless, the above solution does work for photos, videos, and PDFs in my testing, even if it’s a bit ridiculous. It won’t make getting photos off an SD card onto your iPad enjoyable, but it will make it possible to use it again. At least you won’t need to use a laptop and can continue to use your iPad for work.
A Better Solution? Get Apple to Fix It
You could go through that workaround for every file type, and that’s about all you can do right now. However, if you want a more permanent solution, you can tell Apple to stop huffing paint and fix this.
Go to Apple’s iPad feedback page. There, you can leave your unfiltered thoughts for the Apple employees who made this feature. Really let them know your enthusiasm for actually using your iPad and how iOS 26 made that more difficult. I ended up using my Mac to compare my photos instead. The Photos app is right there and Apple chose to make the Files app open my photos and videos in a damn PDF reader app instead. How stupid do you have to be to get a job at Apple?