Do you already have an iPad? Check out the App Store. Are you thinking of getting an iPad? Then, check out the App Store too! Hope to recommend some best shopping apps for iPad to you. These apps are what I hope will help make your iPad a powerful learning, entertainment and productivity tool.
Table of Contents
Best Apps For Ipad Free
Free app of the month: Animoog Z
A screenshot showing Animoog Z on iPad
(Image credit: Moog Music Inc.)
Animoog Z builds on pioneering digital synthesizer Animoog, which married arresting visuals, rich Moog sounds, and an intuitive interface that let even beginners make grin-inducing noise with a minimum of effort. This follow-up takes things further, with sounds that now zip around through the X, Y and Z axes.
The setup remains the same. A large space is reserved for a visual interpretation of your sound – all neon green lines, with fluorescent comets flitting around. The keyboard defaults to scales, so what you play always sounds great. And none of this is limited: for free, you can dig into every preset, load thousands of user-defined sounds, and even save custom settings.
A paid tier ($19.99 / £17.99 / AU$30.99) opens up pro-grade connectivity and panes for more heavily manipulating sounds; but even for free, you get a full-featured, great-sounding, beautiful iPad synth.
The best free entertainment apps for iPad
Our favorite free iPad apps for having fun with your iPad, whether shopping, coloring, reading, watching TV or using Twitter.
A screenshot showing Serial Reader
(Image credit: Michael Schmitt)
Serial Reader
Serial Reader wants you to read the classics. You might argue you don’t have time to wade through The Odyssey or War and Peace, but Serial Reader begs to differ, and cunningly chops up such tomes – and hundreds more you can choose from – into bite-sized chunks you can blaze through on a daily basis.
Each ‘issue’ takes about ten minutes to read and arrives at a user-defined time, along with an optional notification. It’s a clever system that really does get you reading. And the reading experience itself is solid too, with all the usual layout and typography options you’d expect.
Generously, you get all this for free, but pay $2.99/£2.49/AU$4.49 for premium and you get extra features, including cloud sync, ‘read ahead’ to future issues, highlights and notes, series pausing and the option to add your own EPUBs.
A screenshot showing Reading List – Book Tracker
(Image credit: Andrew Bennet)
Reading List – Book Tracker
Reading List – Book Tracker is ideal if you buy loads of books and then forget about rather than read them. You add books to your virtual library by scanning barcodes or adding them from a web search results list. They then lurk in the sidebar.
A single tap on any entry and you can peruse its various details, along with heading off to Amazon or Google Books. Through adding user-defined categories, you can manage larger collections, or even have Reading List act as a wish list for titles you’ve not yet purchased. Basic progress tracking is in the mix too.
For free, the app is resolutely single-device, with no iCloud sync. But given the other features, it feels like a generous freebie for people who want to keep track of the books they’re reading.
A screenshot showing Sandbox – Physics Simulator
(Image credit: Tran Dinh Hung)
Sandbox – Physics Simulator
Sandbox – Physics Simulator is an entertainingly noodly mix of creation and wanton destruction. It gives you a blank screen and a bunch of icons, inviting you to select materials and draw components to fill the void. You can build levitating stone structures that can be filled with soil and seeds, at which point flowers will start to grow.
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Alternatively, you can explore what will happen when lightning blasts firework powder, or when you drop a bomb on your beautiful creation. Hint: nothing good for the things you’ve made. But Sandbox itself is plenty good. Sure, it’s a long way from real life, and its old-school pixel art aesthetic screams retro. But as a way to experiment and relax – whether you chill by making things grow or blowing them up – this is an excellent iPad freebie.
MusicHarbor
(Image credit: Marcos Antonio Tanaka)
MusicHarbor
MusicHarbor deals with a gap in Apple Music and other streaming services: keeping track of your favorite artists, rather than just playing their tracks.
You can import artists from your local library or a streaming service. Imports appear as disc-shaped buttons. Tap on one and the artist/band page will display releases in reverse-chronological order, with a button to zip to a Google News search based on relevant keywords.
Elsewhere, the sidebar provides instant access to latest and upcoming releases, music videos, and concerts. Go pro ($5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99) and you can filter releases by kind, adjust the app’s appearance, and filter concerts by proximity. Even if you don’t, this one’s a must to keep tabs on artists and bands.
Photo Flashback!
(Image credit: Konstantinos Karagiannis)
Photo Flashback!
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Photo Flashback! recalls services like Timehop that serve up photos you took years ago on today’s date. Here, though, the focus is solely on the contents of photos on your iPad and in iCloud Photo Library.
On launching the app, you’ll see the day’s selection and can opt to add the current year via a quick trip to the app’s settings. To check out other dates, tap the calendar. In the window that appears, each date lists the number of photos available, along with a small preview of one of them.
Photo Flashback! is another of those free apps that’s generous to the point you wonder what the catch is. But there isn’t one – this is just a wonderful and entirely free way to relive favorite memories.
The Wallpaper App
(Image credit: Lumen Digital)
The Wallpaper App
The Wallpaper App gives you endless wallpapers for your iPad. The designs are procedurally generated, based around 15 different styles that are accessed by horizontal swipes. Within each style, variations are previewed by you tapping on the left or right half of the screen. Swipe upwards and you find more controls, to subtly adjust the brightness and color within the current design.
Unlike most free wallpaper apps, output is optimized specifically for your iPad – although you can long-press the Save button to export wallpaper for other screen sizes.
The entire production feels elegant, perfectly matching the host hardware. And although it perhaps won’t suit every iPad owner – especially if you’re keen on using photography for screen backgrounds – it’s an ideal download if you fancy shaking up your Home screens with something arty and refined.
Sofa: Downtime Organizer
(Image credit: Astrio, LLC)
Sofa: Downtime Organizer
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Sofa is a free iPad app that’s all about organizing your downtime by making lists. Tap the + button and you can choose a category, search for something, and then add it to your collection. Using the sidebar, you can categorize items you add however you wish.
Because Sofa uses existing online data for items you add, it will automatically import cover art and synopses. For movies, music, and podcasts in particular, it works very well as a means to remind yourself about things you plan to check out – and of what you’ve already watched and listened to.
The app’s less impressive for books and games, but given the lack of a price tag (IAPs are for additional themes), and iCloud support to sync data between devices, Sofa’s a solid option when you want a fast, simple means to plan what media you’d like to experience in the future.
(Image credit: Brent Simmons)
NetNewsWire
NetNewsWire is an RSS reader – a news aggregator that lets you subscribe to website feeds, and have headlines and articles beamed directly to the app. In fact, for many people, it’s the news aggregator, having been a big name in various forms since 2002.
This latest incarnation is open source and therefore free from a price tag. It’s also free from ads, IAP, and cruft. It’s less flashy than paid fare like Unread and Reeder, but has an elegant simplicity that sits well when you want a speedy no-nonsense experience that’s nonetheless friendly and usable.
Although gunning for efficiency, this app gives you all the most vital features: direct feed subscriptions, Feedly/Feedbin sync, dark mode, reader view, and feed import/export. In fact, it’s so good it might tempt you away from its premium-priced contemporaries.
(Image credit: Google)
Google News
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Google News might seem redundant in the age of Apple News, but it serves a purpose. Like Apple’s equivalent, this free news app for iPhone learns as you use it, aiming to serve up stories you’ll be interested in. And in a similar fashion to Apple News, you can flag specific publications and topics you like to read.
Where Google News diverges from Apple is with the ‘full coverage’ button. Tap this and you can view a story across a range of publications, and check out a reports timeline – useful in an era of increasingly partisan coverage.
Beyond that, there are many other reasons to make the app one of your go-tos for news: fast access to any source’s list of stories; the means to hide any publication; a regularly updated briefing; an optional daily news email; and a stripped-back, cruft-free reading experience.
(Image credit: TechRadar)
GIFwrapped
GIFwrapped is designed for GIF obsessives. If you can’t get through an entire social media message without welding a looping animation to it, this is the app for you.
Universal search provides fast access to more GIFs than you could conceivably hope to use in several lifetimes, even if you tried very hard. It’s also possible to import your own Burst and Live Photos. Whatever you find can be saved to your local library; GIFs can then be shared from the app itself, or in Messages by using the GIFwrapped iMessage app.
For other use-cases, stashing GIFwrapped in Slide Over seems to work particularly well. And if you get very deeply into the app, affordable subscription IAP removes ads, powers up search, and lets you remove the watermark from shared GIFs.
Best free apps for ipad 2021
01
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Crackle
Crackle website featuring free entertainment
What We Like
Great selection of movies and TV shows.
Free with no subscription commitment.
Original and on-demand content.
What We Don’t Like
No live-streaming choices.
You’ll see ads before watching content.
Few kids’ options.
Read Our Article on Crackle
Move over Netflix and Hulu Plus, there’s a great new movie app in town. Crackle delivers excellent entertainment in an interface that stands up to Hulu Plus and exceeds Netflix. Plus, it’s a free download with no subscription costs. With free movies and TV shows, Crackle is a must-have app and one of the best free apps on the App Store.
Download Crackle
02
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iWork
iWork for iPad with Number, Keynote, and Pages
What We Like
Free to download and use.
Apps have a clean, easy-to-use interface.
Access your work on other devices via iCloud.
Open, edit, and save documents in Office format.
What We Don’t Like
Writing tools in Pages aren’t as robust as Word.
Not as many online support resources as Office.
Read Our Article on iWork for iPad
Apple began giving away the iWork suite of office apps to anyone who purchased a new iPad or iPhone after the release of the iPhone 5S in late 2013. The iWork suite includes a word processor (Pages), spreadsheet (Numbers), and presentation software (Keynote).
How do these apps stack up to Microsoft Office? The iWork suite isn’t quite as complete as Microsoft Office, but it’s also not quite as bloated. Most of us don’t need all the extra features packed in with our word processor or spreadsheet, and for us, iWork is perfect.
Download Pages for iPad
Download Numbers for iPad
Download Keynote for iPad
03
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Facebook
Facebook on the iPad
What We Like
Use Siri to create status updates.
Connect with friends and family on the go.
iPad Facebook interface is easy to use.
What We Don’t Like
Help resources are lacking.
Facebook is often mired in controversy.
Read Our Introduction to Facebook
Facebook works fine from the iPad’s web browser, but to get the best experience, download the official app. With Facebook on your iPad, it’s easy to send images directly to Facebook via the iPad Photos Share button. Send web links from Safari, update your status using Siri, and more.
Download Facebook
04
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Google Maps
Google Maps on the iPad
What We Like
Get maps for multiple transportation modes.
Easily share maps with friends and family.
Street View perspective, indoor maps, and a host of other tools.
What We Don’t Like
Street View occasionally captures images you may not want to see.
Offline navigation is available only for cars.
Design could be more streamlined.
Read Our Introduction to Google Maps
When Apple replaced Google Maps with its own Maps app, it created such a backlash that Tim Cook apologized. Apple Maps has come a long way since its initial release, but many people still prefer Google Maps.
If you want to use your iPad as a navigation tool or to map your route before you get into the car, Google Maps is one of the must-have apps on the App Store. Apple’s Maps app would certainly win the award for prettiest, but Google Maps is still the most functional.
Download Google Maps
05
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Evernote
Evernote iPad app
What We Like
Tons of features that go beyond note-taking.
Access Evernote on multiple devices.
Access note history.
Notes are synchronized in real time.
What We Don’t Like
If you have a large notebook list, it can be hard to access the one you want.
Mistakes numbers for phone numbers and creates a clickable link.
Read Our Introduction to Evernote
Evernote works similar to the Notes app that comes with the iPad but includes a number of super-charged features. Evernote is cloud-based, so you sign in to your account to retrieve your notes. This means you can sign in with your PC, iPad, or Android device. Create notes and task lists, email them from your Evernote account, and organize them by tags.
Conclusion
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