Kanban on iPad: a board that uses the whole screen
Why the iPad is the best screen for a personal Kanban board, and how to use the sidebar, drag and drop, keyboard shortcuts, and Split View in Hense.
The short answer. The iPad is the best screen most people own for a personal Kanban board: wide enough to see four or five columns at once, touch-first so dragging a card is natural, and always with you. Hense is a native iPad app (not a stretched iPhone app or a web page) with a board sidebar, drag and drop, keyboard shortcuts, and iCloud sync. It is free to start.
Why a board works so well on an iPad
A Kanban board is a spatial tool. Its whole point is that you can see the stages of a project next to each other and physically move work from one to the next. On a phone that has to be simulated with paging and zooming. On a Mac it works, but you are moving cards with a pointer.
On an iPad the board simply fits. Four or five columns sit side by side at a readable size, you drag a card with a finger and drop it where it belongs, and when you want to plan you prop the iPad up and look at the whole board like a wall of sticky notes. If you use an iPad for reading, planning, or studying, it is probably the device where a board will actually get used.
The catch is that many Kanban apps treat the iPad as a large phone. They keep the phone layout, skip the sidebar, and ignore the keyboard. So the things to check in any iPad Kanban app are: does it use the width, does it use the keyboard, and does it behave inside Split View.
What Hense does differently on iPad
Hense was rebuilt for iPad and Mac in version 1.2 (August 2026), and the iPad gets the same large-screen experience as the Mac:
- A sidebar with your boards. Your board list lives on the left, one tap from any board. Each row shows the board’s color and a count of columns and cards.
- Zoomed layout, always. Columns are 320 points wide and you scroll horizontally, so a board with five columns is fully visible on a 13-inch iPad in landscape.
- Drag and drop with a finger or a trackpad. Press and hold a card, move it, drop it. Cards drop below the card you are pointing at, with a dashed placeholder showing where it will land.
- Context menus. Long-press a board in the sidebar, a column header, or a card for edit, copy, move, and delete. Nothing is hidden in an overflow menu.
- Keyboard shortcuts with a Magic Keyboard or any Bluetooth keyboard: new board, new column, new card, edit board, copy board, filter by label. Hold the Command key to see the list.
- Search from the sidebar with a scope switch between All Boards and Current Board. Tapping a result opens the board and scrolls to the card.
Setting up an iPad board
In Hense
- Install Hense from the App Store on the iPad. If you already use it on iPhone, your boards appear in the sidebar as soon as iCloud syncs.
- Create a board with the plus button at the top of the sidebar (or press ⌘N). Give it a name and a color.
- Add your columns. Press ⇧⌘N or tap Add Column at the right end of the board. On an iPad it is worth adding a Waiting or Blocked column between Doing and Done, because you have the room to see it.
- Add cards with ⌥⌘N or the Add Card button at the bottom of a column. Open a card to add a due date, checklist, labels, or a photo.
- Drag cards between columns as work moves. In landscape, five columns are visible at once, so most moves are a single drag.
Using Split View and Slide Over
Because Hense is a real iPad app, it works in the multitasking layouts:
- Split View with Notes, Mail, or Safari. Keep the board on one side while you read the email that generated the task, then add the card without leaving the message. In a narrower Split View pane Hense keeps the zoomed layout and you scroll horizontally.
- Slide Over for a quick check. Swipe the board in from the edge, drag a card to Done, swipe it away.
- Stage Manager on supported iPads, where Hense behaves like any resizable window.
Hense does not open multiple windows on iPad the way it does on Mac. If you want two boards side by side, that is a Mac feature today.
Keyboard shortcuts worth learning on iPad
If you use a keyboard with your iPad, these are the six that turn Hense into a planning tool rather than a viewer:
| Shortcut | What it does |
|---|---|
| ⌘N | New board |
| ⇧⌘N | New column in the open board |
| ⌥⌘N | New card in the open board |
| ⌘E | Edit the open board (name, color, labels) |
| ⇧⌘D | Copy the open board (Pro) |
| ⇧⌘L | Filter by label |
Hold ⌘ on the keyboard and iPadOS shows the full list.
Planning sessions: how to use the big screen
The iPad’s advantage is the wide view, so use it for the moments a phone is bad at:
- A weekly review. Open the board, scroll through every column, and ask three questions: what is stuck in Doing, what in Waiting can be chased, and what in To Do is due this week. Move cards as you go. Ten minutes on a Sunday is enough; the weekly Kanban board guide has a full routine.
- Breaking down a big card. Open the card, add a checklist of the concrete steps, and set a due date. The card shows its progress on the board, so you see “3 of 7” without opening it again.
- Triage with labels. Turn on the label filter (⇧⌘L or the filter button) and look at just one client, one class, or one area of the house at a time.
Free vs Pro on iPad
Everything above is in the free version: the sidebar, drag and drop, keyboard shortcuts, Split View, board search, and iCloud sync, with 2 boards, 5 columns per board, 3 labels, 5 checklist items per card, and 1 attachment per card.
Hense Pro ($9.99 USD, one time, no subscription) removes the limits and adds copying boards, columns, and cards (which is how you reuse a board as a template), end-state columns, search across every board, and the label: and column: filters. One purchase unlocks iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
Frequently asked questions
Is Hense a native iPad app or a scaled-up iPhone app?
Hense is native on iPad. It uses a sidebar for your boards, a wide zoomed board layout, context menus, keyboard shortcuts, and it works in Split View, Slide Over, and Stage Manager. The iPhone version uses a different, one-column-at-a-time layout.
Can I use an Apple Pencil with Hense?
You can tap, drag, and scroll with an Apple Pencil, and it works well for moving cards. Hense does not have handwriting or drawing features; cards are text, dates, checklists, labels, and attachments.
Does Hense support keyboard shortcuts on iPad?
Yes. With any keyboard connected, Hense supports shortcuts for new board, new column, new card, edit board, copy board, and filter by label. Hold the Command key to see them.
Does the iPad version sync with iPhone and Mac?
Yes. Hense is one universal app for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, and boards sync automatically through your iCloud account. No separate account is needed.
Which iPads does Hense run on?
Any iPad running iPadOS 18 or later, including iPad, iPad mini, iPad Air, and iPad Pro.