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(Credit: René Ramos; Apple)
Everyone loves an iPhone, but don’t sleep on the big-screen iPad. The right apps can transform the iPad into nearly anything you desire, and the tablets are only getting more powerful. Whether you opt for the comfortable iPad Air or capable iPad Pro, there’s an app that entertains or helps you stay productive.Looking to get things done while working from home? The iPad becomes a mobile office suite when you must step away from the desktop or laptop. Trying to figure out what to stream this weekend? The iPad morphs into a portable television for checking out the newest shows and movies when the kids hog the flat screen. Want to paint, draw, or illustrate? With the right apps and the Apple Pencil, there’s never been a more powerful, more affordable graphic design tool than the iPad. With so many options at your fingertips, how do you find the apps worth downloading?Look no further than this roundup. PCMag’s staff has tested dozens upon dozens of iPad apps and highlighted the best of the best. They include native iPad apps that deliver unique and compelling tablet-based experiences on iPadOS; these are not iPhone apps running on a larger screen. We’ve also included links to in-depth reviews where available. Rest assured that even those apps that haven’t been fully reviewed are included because they’ve impressed us after some serious hands-on time.Please note that we aren’t spotlighting preinstalled apps or games. The former aren’t included because default apps are easy to find—they already live on your iPad’s home screen. The latter aren’t included because we’ve given the best iPad games their own dedicated article. We even have a feature on the best iPad board game apps.Looking for apps for your other devices? We’ve got you covered there, too, with our roundups of the best Android apps and best Android games.
Creativity
Illustrator on the iPad is Adobe’s only dedicated vector graphics app available for Apple’s tablet. When Adobe first launched Photoshop for the iPad, some felt it lacked too many features to be truly useful. With the new Illustrator on the iPad, Adobe didn’t want a repeat of the critiques that greeted Photoshop’s iPad release. After addressing more than 1,200 requests from beta testers, Adobe released Illustrator for iPad chock full of features that let you masterfully design on the go.
Per Month, Starts at $9.99
Adobe Lightroom is the go-to digital photo workflow and editing application for many of today’s professional photographers. That said, there are times when you might prefer to edit photos sitting on a sofa or a train seat rather than at a desk. The Lightroom iPad app lets you do just this, and work directly with raw camera files, perform local adjustments, and use lens-profile corrections. Lightroom has evolved into a powerhouse among mobile photo-editing apps.
MSRP $9.99
Adobe has numerous photo-related apps in the iTunes app store, but Photoshop Mix is especially interesting. It brings some of Photoshop’s most powerful tools into an easy-to-use iPad app. Photoshop Mix appeals to a broad cross-section of users, from those who simply want to create collages to hardcore Photoshoppers who want to add iPads into their workflows.
MSRP Free
The iPad became a legitimate music composition tool thanks in large part to its own version of GarageBand, Apple’s seminal, entry-level digital audio editing app. GarageBand contains many professional-level features, including piano roll-style note editing, an expanded sound palette, and additional recording tools. You can even record and edit audio from third-party instrument apps using GarageBand.
MSRP $4.99
If you’re going to edit video on a tablet, it’s hard to overlook Apple’s own iMovie app. The affordably priced iPad app lets you create trailers, whip up studio logos, save video in 4K resolution, and transfer projects between your iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch using AirDrop or iCloud Drive.
MSRP Free
Arturia iMini Synthesizer
Arturia, venerable purveyors of virtual versions of various Moog models over the years, has released a “real” virtual Minimoog—beating Moog itself to the punch. Fortunately, it’s a killer synth app, one that boasts plenty of useful additional features, including an all-important polyphonic mode and arpeggiator.
MSRP $4.99
From the makers of TikTok, CapCut makes it easy for anyone to edit videos on a mobile device. With a longer time limit and enhanced editing options, it’s the perfect free upgrade for TikTok creators looking to level up their videos.
MSRP Free
Procreate is an excellent option for digital artists who want to make the most of the iPad Pro’s capabilities, including the Apple Pencil. Procreate gives you all the tools you need to create the sketches, paintings, and illustrations you can image. Rounding out the list of features are continuous autosave, high-resolution canvases, and 136 different types of brushes to try.
MSRP $12.99
Education and Information
If you’re looking to learn or practice a language on an iPad, Duolingo is indisputably the way to go. The app has expanded its pool of languages over the past few year and it now offers a couple dozen choices, ranging from Danish to Vietnamese. You can still use Duolingo for free, but there’s now also a Duolingo Plus tier, for $12.99, which removes ads and gives you the ability to download lessons for offline studying.
MSRP Free
Flipboard offers iPad users an entirely original alternative to browsing the web for news; its magazine-style layouts and breathtaking use of photos and whitespace render RSS feeds as beautiful, easy-to-read pages. The app also taps your social media feeds for articles, as well as music and video streams.
MSRP Free
Traveling is expensive. The free Google Earth app most certainly is not. By keying in a location such as “Coney Island” or “London,” you can zip to the other side of the globe in mere seconds to check out satellite and aerial imagery. Geo-located Wikipedia articles add insight to your journey.
MSRP Free
One of the biggest hurdles that people face when traveling abroad is language. You may think that you’re asking for directions to a music festival when you’re actually insulting the town’s sacred goat god. Words can kill, so download Google Translate. The app quickly translates either written text or spoken words. You can even use the app to do the speaking for you, and input text through your camera or handwriting.
MSRP Free
There are many good NASA-sponsored and NASA-related apps for the iPad, but none compares with this official NASA App Compiled by NASA’s Ames Research Center, the app combines insightful articles and news stories, dazzling images and videos, and live TV feeds, making it a one-stop portal for most everything NASA.
Paprika is one of our favorite meal planning apps, because it can help make you so much more efficient in the kitchen. It’s especially convenient on iPad, where you can see the big screen from further away without using your hands. Using the app, you can save and recipes from across the web, access helpful cooking instructions while offline, and add your own custom recipes. Use grocery lists and the pantry system to keep your ingredients straight as you plan meals. Even better, Paprika is a once-time purchase—no subscription required.
MSRP $4.99
The Pyramids is a multimedia journey into some of the most renowned and magnificent structures of the ancient world, the Pyramids, Sphinx, and tombs at Giza, Egypt. With this beautifully designed app, you can read about early Egyptian history, examine 3D-rendered artifacts, and even take virtual journeys into the Pyramids and tombs while a narrator explains what they are seeing.
MSRP $6.99
The Reuters app delivers the venerable newswire’s core product, news and market data, with a broader experience than either NPR’s magazine-style product or Bloomberg’s finance-heavy offering. The app features dozens of customizable categories, a personalized watch list for business news, and geographic-specific news views.
MSRP Free
Entertainment
It’s easy for a company to rest on its laurels when it becomes the face of its industry, but Comixology, the premier digital comic book delivery service, keeps evolving. The iPad app boasts useful Smart Lists, recommendations, and one of the deepest comic book catalogs available on mobile devices. If you don’t mind renting your comics, Comixology Unlimited is an excellent value at $5.99 per month, as it lets you read an unlimited number of titles from nearly any publisher that isn’t DC or Marvel.
MSRP Free
Crackle, Sony’s streaming video network, lets users stream free, ad-supported Hollywood television shows and uncut movies, as well as original content, from Columbia Pictures, Screen Gems, Sony Pictures Classic, and TriStar Pictures. There’s a nice variety of classic and contemporary content here, making it a solid iPad app for anyone who would like to kick back with their tablet and watch a program without needing to open their wallet.
MSRP Free
Being a fan of anime used to mean that you were subject to the whims of media importers or your friend who had a high-bandwidth Internet connection and shady IRC contacts. Now you can watch Attack on Titan, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Mobile Suit Gundam Iron Blooded Children, and more than 20,000 other episodes of other shows on your tablet with Crunchyroll. Even better, many programs are available just an hour after they air overseas.
Per Month, Starts at $7.99
With DC Universe’s video content now on HBO Max, DC Universe Infinite has become a pure comic book reading app. Considering that DC makes up roughly half of the entire comic book market, you’ll find plenty of awesome comics to read beyond just Batman and Superman. An active community and rotating selection of free comics sweeten the deal.
Per Month, Starts at $7.99
Hulu no longer offers a free viewing tier, but the service is still an excellent way to watch streaming television shows the day after they air on networks, as well as movies and original programming, on your iPad. Its Watch Party feature synchronizes shows between you and several friends, so that you can safely enjoy content together.
Per Month, Starts at $7.99
iPad-toting comic book fans who want to take a dive into Marvel’s deep digital comics well should download Marvel Unlimited. This Netflix-like subscription-based app focuses on letting readers comb a library of more than 15,000 digital comics from throughout Marvel’s history, provided that the books are at least three months old. You can also purchase select titles, and, if you pay extra, receive numerous collectible bonuses.
Per Month, Starts at $9.99
If regular old broadcast TV isn’t doing it for you, Netflix may be the answer to your media woes. For less than the price of a New York City movie ticket, you can watch a decent array of movies and a wide selection of original Netflix content, such as Altered Carbon, The Crown, Black Mirror, Orange Is the New Black, and Stranger Things.
Per Month, Starts at $6.99
Peacock offers a wide variety of shows and movies from across the NBCUniversal library, from The Office to Real Housewives. Unfortunately, it no longer offers a free tier. Still, Peacock is an excellent, low-cost video streaming option.
Per Month, Starts at $5.99
Spotify is an ear- and eye-catching way to enjoy an Editors’ Choice pick for streaming music players on your iPad. The app boasts collaborative playlists, commercial-free listening with premium accounts, on-demand playback, and cool, music-tempo-adjusting features for runners.
Per Month, Starts at $10.99
Jay Z’s 2015 purchase of little-known company Aspiro left many scratching their heads, but when the rapper and an all-star squad of singers and musicians unveiled the fruits of the buy, a music streaming service named Tidal, it started to make sense. Tidal is one of many subscription-based music apps, but it differs from Slacker Radio and Spotify in that it’s aimed at music fans willing to pay a premium for exclusive content, quality editorial, and lossless, 16-bit CD-quality sound.
Per Month, Starts at $10.99
Tubi is an awesome video streaming service with thousands of mainstream movies and TV shows that you can watch for free. You may not always get the newest releases, and you’ll have to sit through ads, but your wallet will thank you. Great movies look even better on a big, sharp tablet screen.
TuneIn Radio Pro continues to evolve. Most recently, the live radio streaming service has added an optional $7.99 per month subscription service, TuneIn Radio Premium, that boasts ad-free music, live sports, and other audio content. Amid all the changes, however, TuneIn Radio Pro also maintains its core functionality. TuneIn Radio Pro still lets you fire up more than 100,000 global AM and FM stations, rewind live radio, and record programming to your iPad’s storage.
MSRP $9.99
Twitch is the best way to watch your favorite streaming personalities and chat with fellow gaming fans on your mobile device. Even better, Twitch’s mobile apps let you stream and download your gameplay videos directly to your device. Twitch is also the service to turn to if you want to watch countless people, from professionals to hobbyists, stream non-gaming content, such as chess and painting. The large iPad screen lets you see everything without losing detail.
MSRP Free
The WWE Network cuts out cable companies and delivers 720p pro wrestling streams directly to fans. Using the app, you can stream shows 24/7, including original content, such as backstage interviews and documentaries. The schedule tab lets you know what’s coming on next, and commercials are limited to brief ads in between shows, not during them. You can also set parental controls to keep kids from watching the more violent stuff, although if you’re a parent letting your child watch wrestling that genie is already out of the bottle.
MSRP $9.99
YouTube, the home of bootleg music, conspiracy theorists, Lets Players, ASMR whispering, and cat videos, brings its extensive catalog to the iPad in the form of a free app. Signing up for the YouTube Premium service lets you enjoy ad-free video streaming, original YouTube video series, and ad-free YouTube Music tunes.
MSRP Free
Productivity
If you had any doubts regarding the iPad’s productivity chops, look no further than Apple’s own iWork for iPad. There three separate apps—Keynote, Numbers, and Pages—amount to a mobile office suite. They are must-have apps for getting work done on Apple’s slate.
MSRP $9.99
FileMaker Go, which originally began life as a very solid $30 iPad app, should now be considered must-have mobile database software among desktop FileMaker Pro users. The database program’s excellent design, multiple file layouts, integrated search, digital signature capture, and charting capabilities make it a must-download app for FileMaker users.
MSRP Free
Microsoft did an impressive job shoehorning the gigantic industrial plant that is desktop Excel into the narrow dimensions of a tablet. You get many essential desktop options—formatting, sorting, filtering, columns, rows, charting styles—in a sleek, intuitive package. Excel for iPad gets the job done more elegantly and efficiently than any other tablet spreadsheet app.
MSRP Free
Word processors and spreadsheets are a lot easier to manage on a computer with a full-sized keyboard and mouse, but presentations turn out to be almost ideal for a tablet. Microsoft PowerPoint for the iPad is a pleasure to use, fast, responsive, and well-adapted to a touch interface.
MSRP Free
Microsoft Word for iPad is the first app that gets tablet-based word processing right. Everything else has been either too weak or too strong, either over- or under-loaded with features. Word for iPad doesn’t try to do everything that its desktop sibling does, but it does everything you’re likely to want on your tablet, including revision tracking and simultaneous collaborative editing.
MSRP Free
Mint’s iPad app allows the money-conscious to see where they’re spending and where they can save some chips. Simply create an account, add your bank, credit card, loan, and retirement accounts, and Mint automatically imports and categorizes your transactions. It’s a great way to create and track budgets.
MSRP Free
Editors’ Choice winner Note Taker HD is a great note-taking tool that does the job nicely, without denting your wallet. The number of features may overwhelm casual users, but anyone looking for a multi-faceted tool for making annotations, diagrams, and doodling will find a lot to like here.
MSRP Free
If you’ve ever wanted to create a single PDF from a Word file, Excel spreadsheet, or Pages document, or to add a new page to the front or rear of an already created PDF, Save2PDF is the app for you. It lets mobile professionals select multiple files of different types and merge them into a single PDF file, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg; you can also edit, zip, and wirelessly print documents.
MSRP $4.99
Utility
If you’re looking for an infinitely simple way to keep files in sync between your iPad, desktop, and phone, Dropbox for iPad is a must. It’s simple to use, it’s free, and it offers offline file access.
MSRP Free
When it comes to remote desktop access, GoToMyPC is the only game in town. The app makes it simple to control your Mac or PC while away from your work area, but latency issues may dampen the experience.
Per User, Per Year, Starts at $420.00
The iPad is a great device for online reading, but what happens when you can’t connect to the web? Enter Instapaper, an iPad app that lets users save any webpage for anytime, offline reading. Even better, pages saved to your account can be accessed from the desktop, iPhone, and Kindle.
MSRP Free
itSeez3D transforms your iPad into a mobile 3D scanner. You can view the scans as rotatable 3D figures, upload them to a 3D model-sharing site, or email them to the company for conversion to a 3D-printable format. The app makes use of true 3D data, instead of combining a large number of 2D images to create a 3D scan as some other iPad apps do.
MSRP Free
There is a really cool app that turns your iPad into a network toolbox, and that app is named, appropriately enough, Network Toolbox. Not only is it chock full of networking utilities that can help analyze and troubleshoot a network, but it’s also an attractive app, and one that is well in line with Apple’s design aesthetics.
MSRP $6.99
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