13 Essential iPad Apps Everyone Should Have Installed – BGR

The iPad has become one of Apple’s most important devices, with the iPad Pro and iPad Air ranking among its most popular models. For many people, it is the perfect middle ground between a smartphone and a laptop. The experience, however, depends heavily on the apps you choose to install. With more than 1.9 million apps available in the App Store and billions of downloads recorded over the years, there is no shortage of options competing for your attention. The real question is which ones actually deserve a permanent spot on your device.

A well-chosen mix of apps can turn the iPad into a digital notebook, a portable office, or a hub for entertainment and creativity. They can also help users get the most out of the hardware’s performance, whether that means editing documents, sketching, streaming, or managing day-to-day tasks.

This roundup highlights the essential iPad apps that should be on every user’s radar. Each one adds clear value, covers a key need, and improves the overall iPad experience.

If you want to turn your iPad into a professional canvas, Procreate is the app to start with. Currently ranked as the number one paid iPad app on the App Store in the U.S., it has become a favorite for artists who want serious creative tools without the hassle of subscriptions. For a one-time price of $12.99, you get access to a powerful digital studio that’s designed to work seamlessly with Apple Pencil. The result is an experience that makes drawing and painting feel precise and natural.

With Procreate, users can create quick sketches, paint, or dive into detailed, high-resolution projects. The app’s advanced layering system, wide range of brushes, and editing tools give you plenty of flexibility to bring ideas to life. You also have the option to customize brushes or even build your own, which makes the creative process feel completely personal. Just keep in mind that Procreate only runs on iPadOS 16.3 upward. When you’re ready to share your work, it supports exporting in multiple formats for print, animation, or digital platforms.

Learning a new language used to mean long classes, heavy textbooks, and endless flashcards. Today, the process looks very different. With the right tools, lessons can fit into your life, turning spare moments into opportunities to build real skills.

Duolingo is one of the most popular apps for language learning, and the iPad version makes it even more engaging. The app requires iPadOS 16 or later, and is free to download. It offers lessons in over 40 languages, including Mandarin, which saw a sharp spike in U.S. learners when a TikTok ban was under consideration. The app covers speaking, listening, reading, and writing, and each lesson is short enough to fit into a busy schedule, which makes progress feel achievable. For users who want more, the Super Duolingo subscription costs $12.99 per month and includes offline access along with an ad-free experience.

The app’s biggest strength is how it keeps learning fun. Lessons use a gamified format with points, streaks, and achievements that reward consistency and make progress easy to track. Over time, the mix of exercises builds practical skills without overwhelming new learners. Besides, the larger display of the iPad makes lessons feel more immersive, helping language practice fit naturally into everyday life.

Everyone has a story to tell, and these days, video is the most popular way to share it. From vacation highlights to viral social clips, editing makes the difference between a rough cut and something that grabs attention. That used to mean sitting down at a computer with expensive software, but CapCut changes the equation completely.

Owned by the same company behind TikTok, CapCut is a free video editing app that takes full advantage of the iPad’s large screen and touch controls, making it easy to trim, arrange, and polish clips. The interface feels simple, yet the tools are powerful enough to handle detailed projects. You can add transitions, filters, and effects with a few taps. It is beginner-friendly and supports direct export to the TikTok app, eliminating the need to download and re-upload. In fact, it has become so popular among content creators that Instagram launched its own copycat app called Edits. 

For more advanced features, CapCut offers optional in-app purchases and a Pro subscription starting at $7.99 per month. In terms of compatibility, it supports iPadOS 13 or later versions.

Keeping up with the news can feel somewhat overwhelming, but Flipboard makes it easier to follow the stories that matter most. Instead of jumping between multiple sites or apps, everything is pulled together into one place, presented in a sleek magazine-style layout.

Flipboard is free to download but includes ads, and it lets you create a personalized feed based on your interests. It supports iPadOS 14.7 or higher, allowing you to follow topics like technology, politics, or sports, as well as trusted publications and even individual voices. The result is a tailored reading experience that feels more organized than scrolling through a cluttered news website.

The iPad’s display plays a big role in how Flipboard stands out. Flipping through articles, photos, and videos feels smooth and natural, giving the app a polished, magazine-like feel. The design puts visuals front and center, which makes browsing engaging and easy to navigate.

Great photos don’t always come straight out of the camera. A little editing can make the difference between an average shot and one that stands out, and Adobe Lightroom gives iPad users the tools to do just that. Lightroom is free to download, with a premium plan starting at $4.99 per month that unlocks advanced features and cloud storage.

The app is packed with professional-grade editing tools, letting you adjust color, lighting, and detail with precision. It’s trusted by photographers around the world, whether they’re making quick touch-ups or preparing photos for clients. On iPad, Lightroom feels especially powerful thanks to the larger screen and Apple Pencil support, but it does require iPadOS 17 or higher to take advantage of Apple’s latest performance and graphics features.

Tasks like masking, retouching, and fine adjustments become easier and more accurate with touch controls, giving you a level of control that’s hard to match on smaller devices. The interface also keeps editing approachable, so you don’t need to be a professional to get great results.

For anyone using an iPad as a productivity tool, Apple’s iWork suite is an easy choice. It’s completely free and includes Pages for documents, Numbers for spreadsheets, and Keynote for presentations. Each app is designed to feel intuitive on a touchscreen, which makes tasks like typing, creating charts, or designing slides more natural.

The suite requires iPadOS 15 or higher and takes full advantage of the iPad’s multitouch controls, letting you pinch, swipe, and drag to work more efficiently. Pages makes writing and formatting documents straightforward, while Numbers includes templates and tools for handling everything from budgets to data analysis. Keynote, on the other hand, is a powerful presentation builder that feels right at home on the iPad’s large display.

Another strength of iWork is how seamlessly it integrates with iCloud. Files stay synced across devices, so a project started on an iPad can be finished on a Mac or even an iPhone without losing progress. Sharing and collaboration features are built-in as well, which makes it easier to work with others in real time.

A good note-taking app should feel like more than just digital paper, and Notability delivers exactly that. Free to download, this app supports handwriting, typing, and audio recording in one package, with an optional premium subscription starting at $7.99 per month that unlocks advanced features like note summaries, quizzes and flashcards, and audio transcription.

Supported by iPadOS 17 or later, Notability makes the most of the larger screen, giving you room to handwrite with Apple Pencil, type longer passages, or sketch diagrams directly on the page. And if you want to make sure nothing gets missed during a lecture or meeting, the built-in audio recording feature links directly to your notes. Organization is also quite simple with folders, while iCloud sync ensures everything stays up to date across devices.

Notability has become a favorite among students who need detailed study materials, but it works just as well for professionals planning projects or brainstorming ideas. The ability to switch between writing, drawing, and recording without breaking focus makes it adaptable to nearly any situation.

The internet is full of articles worth reading, but finding the time to sit down with them is another story. Between disorganized web pages, ads, and endless distractions, it’s easy for content to get lost before you have a chance to enjoy it. That’s where Instapaper proves its value.

Instapaper is free to download and lets you save articles to read later, stripping them down to clean text and images without the extra noise. Once saved, your library is available offline, so you can catch up on long reads during a commute, on a flight, or anywhere without internet access. For those who want more, an optional subscription at $5.99 per month adds perks like unlimited highlights and full-text search.

The app is simple but effective, and only supports iPadOS 17.6 or later. You can save content from almost any browser or app, and when it’s time to read, the distraction-free layout makes articles easy to digest. Customization options like text size, font, and background color add to the comfortable reading experience.

Every iPad can handle web browsing, streaming, or games, but few apps showcase its creative potential like GarageBand. This free app (with optional in-app purchases) transforms Apple’s tablet into a fully equipped recording studio, giving musicians the tools to create wherever inspiration strikes.

GarageBand takes advantage of the iPad’s multitouch feature, letting you play virtual instruments right on the screen, from keyboards to drums and guitars. If you want to plug in real instruments, the app supports that too, making it flexible enough for casual users and working musicians alike. Despite being free, it offers multitrack editing and a deep set of features that rival more expensive software.

The app also comes stocked with loops and samples from Apple’s sound library, so building songs can be as fast or as intricate as you want. You can layer tracks, experiment with effects, or sketch out ideas without the need for a professional studio setup. Whether the goal is to learn the basics of music production or to record polished projects on the go, GarageBand has the range to cover it. Just ensure your iPad is running on iPadOS 18 or higher.

The iPad home screen may look good out of the box, but it doesn’t have to stay that way. With the right app, it can feel more like a reflection of your personal style than a default setup. Widgetsmith is the tool that makes that possible.

Free to install and supported by iPadOS 15 upward, Widgetsmith lets you create custom widgets that display calendars, reminders, photos, weather, and more. Instead of sticking with a generic layout, you can design widgets that match your workflow or aesthetic. The result is a home screen that looks and functions exactly the way you want it to.

An optional $1.99 monthly premium plan takes things further, adding interactive widgets and exclusive styles that make layouts even more dynamic. Want a widget that gives you quick access to tide graphs, detailed weather data, or astronomy tools? Premium has that covered, turning your home screen into something far more powerful than just a collection of apps.

Email can quickly feel like a never-ending to-do list, and most default apps don’t do much to make it easier. Spark Mail takes a smarter approach, offering tools that help you get organized instead of overwhelmed. The app is free to use and pulls multiple email accounts and calendars into one clean, streamlined space.

Its smart inbox sorts messages so important emails rise to the top while less urgent ones stay tucked away. That way, you spend less time looking through newsletters and promotional emails and more time focusing on what actually matters. For those who want extra firepower, Spark’s $7.99 monthly premium plan unlocks advanced filtering, team collaboration tools, and AI-powered assistance that drafts faster, cleaner replies.

It turns email into less of a daily grind and more of a controlled workflow. Add in the built-in calendar, and you’ve got one app that can manage schedules and communication without bouncing between different platforms. Though the app is only compatible with iPadOS 16 or higher, it reshapes email into a productivity tool, making it one of the most essential apps for iPad users.

Sticky notes, whiteboards, and reminders scattered across different apps can only keep you organized for so long. Todoist is designed to pull everything together, turning the iPad (iPadOS 17 or later) into a central hub for managing both small tasks and big projects.

The app is free to download, with a premium plan starting at $4.99 per month for those who want more features. At its core, Todoist lets you create projects, set priorities, and schedule recurring tasks so the important stuff doesn’t get buried. Lists stay clean and focused, and breaking larger goals into smaller steps makes them easier to tackle.

The premium plan offers extras like an AI assistant, deadlines, advanced filters, multiple calendar layouts, and task duration tracking. It also integrates seamlessly with services like Gmail, Slack, and Google Calendar, so tasks slide naturally into your existing workflow. Todoist’s drag-and-drop interface makes reorganizing tasks effortless, while the larger display of the iPad gives you a clear view of deadlines and upcoming projects.

Fonts might not be the first thing you think about when setting up an iPad, but they can completely change the look and feel of any project. Whether it’s designing graphics, editing documents, or giving presentations, the right typeface makes a difference — and iFont makes it easy to expand beyond the defaults.

You can download the app for free, which includes all the essentials for browsing, installing, and managing fonts, though you’ll encounter some ads. For those who prefer a cleaner experience, a subscription starting at $4.99 per month removes the ads while providing additional fonts and premium features.

Once installed, fonts integrate system-wide, so they’re available in most creative apps, word processors, or anywhere text is needed. Installation is designed to be simple, sparing users from the complicated setup processes often associated with custom fonts. While iFont only support iPads with iPadOS 16 or later, it is an effective way to add variety and polish to your device.

This list was built with a focus on apps that make the most of what the iPad does best. Each app was chosen not just for popularity, but for how well it uses the device’s hardware, multitouch controls, and larger display to deliver a better experience than you’d get on a phone or computer.

The selection highlights apps that serve practical, everyday needs across creativity, productivity, and personal development. Preference was given to apps with strong user adoption or industry recognition, showing they’ve proven their value over time. Active development was also key, ensuring the apps continue to improve with updates rather than falling behind.

Affordability played a role, too. Every app on the list is either free to download or priced reasonably, with optional subscriptions or one-time purchases available for users who want advanced features.