11 iPad Apps I Actually Use (And 3 I Gave Up On)
I’ve been tweaking and refining my iPad setup for years now, and I think I’ve finally landed on a collection of apps that genuinely makes the device useful rather than just a fancy YouTube machine. Some of these are old friends. A few are recent discoveries. And a couple are apps I’ve reluctantly admitted are just better than the alternatives, even when I wish that weren’t the case.
The Apps That Made the Cut
Drafts (App Store) is where everything starts. I’ve set it up so that based on what I’m doing, it will share to Apple Notes, Obsidian, and Notion. On top of that, I can integrate Claude or ChatGPT and chat with AI directly in Drafts. I also created a draft action that asks me a series of questions, then creates a full note that gets shared directly to Apple Journal. This thing is the bee’s knees. The Drafts Directory has ready-to-use actions for just about any service you can think of, and the developer keeps adding new features like Apple Intelligence integration for on-device LLM scripting. It’s the Swiss Army knife of text that I didn’t know I needed until I couldn’t live without it.
Obsidian (App Store) pulled me back after I briefly wandered away. I left Obsidian very briefly and came crawling back. It’s still the most versatile notetaking app out there, working seamlessly across Apple, Linux, Windows, Android, iOS, and iPadOS. I’ve always had issues with the mobile version, however, the team is finally taking mobile seriously with their recent stream of updates. The 1.10 release brought a completely refreshed mobile interface with faster launch times, better navigation, and new sidebar controls that actually make sense on a touchscreen. They’ve added haptics to toggles and checkboxes, double-tap to switch between reading and editing mode, and the whole thing just feels more intentional now. The plugin ecosystem remains unmatched-I’m still running way too many community plugins, but at least now I can manage them without wanting to throw my iPad across the room.
Apple Notes is where I go to share notes and plan things together with my partner. We plan trips, finances, house projects, and dinner parties all in Apple Notes. It’s restrictive, but it just works. And each year Apple tweaks it just enough to make it slightly more useful than before. There’s something to be said for an app that doesn’t require me to think about file systems or sync settings or plugin compatibility. It’s there when I need it, my partner can access everything instantly, and the collaboration features have gotten genuinely good. Sometimes the boring choice is the right choice.
Todoist (App Store) won me over despite my best efforts to resist. I hate to say it, but Todoist is just too damn versatile to not use. I love Apple Reminders. I prefer it over Todoist. However, Todoist works with everything I need it to work with, and I don’t have to jump through hoops to make it function properly. The natural language input is genuinely impressive-I can type “Submit newsletter draft every Thursday at 9am” and it just figures it out. The Zapier integrations, Todoist MCP, and it’s API let me automate the tedious stuff, and the cross-platform sync actually works without me having to babysit it. They just added a Ramble feature that lets you voice-capture tasks, though I haven’t played with it much yet.
GoodLinks (App Store) is the best way to save articles, period. It’s not the only app that does it, but it’s the only one that truly understands how Apple’s ecosystem works. It embraces the walled garden and shows us how to use it productively rather than fight against it. The iCloud sync just works without requiring yet another account, the Shortcuts integration is deep and thoughtful, and the developer keeps adding features like highlights and annotation export. I wish more developers would follow what GoodLinks and Drafts are doing-building apps that feel like they belong on Apple platforms rather than cross-platform compromises.
Lire is like GoodLinks, but for RSS. Enough said. It has Shortcuts support, works beautifully, and the cost is negligible. You can use it standalone or hook it up to services like Feedly, Feedbin, Inoreader, and others if syncing across devices matters to you. The killer feature is that it fetches full-text articles automatically, so you’re not constantly clicking through to websites just to read a truncated feed. The recent Newsletter Mode update makes it even better for those of us who’ve subscribed to too many Substacks.
Apple Creator Studio is very early to evaluate definitively, but it’s probably the most savvy thing I’ve seen Apple do in a while. Way savvier than AirTag 2. For $12.99/month or $129/year, you get Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage-plus enhanced features in Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. It’s Apple’s direct challenge to Adobe Creative Cloud, and for anyone already in the Apple ecosystem, the value proposition is genuinely compelling. I’ve been testing it since launch and so far it feels solid, though I’ll need a few more months to know if it holds up under real workflow pressure.
Actions (App Store) by Sindre Sorhus fills the gaps that Apple Shortcuts should have covered from the start. I know Apple Intelligence is coming around the corner, but I still love a good Apple Shortcut, and Actions provides the missing functionality that Apple Shortcuts desperately needs. Things like getting system colors, calculating distances, working with file tags, creating duration objects-the kind of utility actions that make complex shortcuts actually possible. The developer is incredibly responsive and keeps adding new capabilities. It’s free, which almost feels like charity at this point.
Actions for Obsidian (App Store) has become essential for getting Obsidian to work with Apple Shortcuts the way it should. With 50+ dedicated Shortcuts actions, it lets me create notes, manipulate files, work with Dataview, and trigger Obsidian commands all from Shortcuts. I’ve got it wired up so I can hit my iPhone’s Action Button, record a voice note, have it transcribed, and dropped straight into my daily note. It’s the kind of integration that makes you wonder why Obsidian itself doesn’t support Shortcuts natively.
Claude gets better every day. Like a lot of developers, Anthropic is still hyper-focused on their desktop app, but they have the tools to make the Claude app work on mobile better than the competition. The only thing holding that back is themselves. The recent iOS app integration that lets Claude draft messages, emails, calendar events, and interact with Reminders directly is genuinely useful. And the new Apple Health connectivity (currently in beta for Pro/Max subscribers in the US) shows they’re thinking about mobile-first use cases. I just wish the iPad experience didn’t feel like an afterthought.
Beam Browser is brand new, and it’s exactly what I’ve been waiting for. Here’s the backstory that sold me: Henrik Singh is a 16-year-old A-level student in the UK who uses a 12.9-inch iPad with a Magic Keyboard for schoolwork. He got frustrated that every iPad browser is basically Safari with a different logo-no sidebar, no spaces, no command bar, nothing like the Arc Browser experience he wanted. So he built it himself and launched Beam in mid-January after months of beta testing with over 250 users.
The result is genuinely impressive. You get the sidebar-first design with spaces, pinned tabs, folders, a command bar (⌘T), and 65+ keyboard shortcuts-the whole Arc experience translated thoughtfully for iPadOS. Singh built in smart memory management so tabs have three states (active, warm, suspended), meaning you can run dozens of tabs without the whole thing collapsing under its own weight. That’s not a trivial problem to solve given iPad memory constraints.
There’s also Beam Intelligence, which runs entirely on-device using Apple’s AI models. It does the usual summarization stuff but adds genuinely useful actions like extracting key points, creating outlines for notes, generating pros/cons lists, and pulling action items from web pages. The AI window pops up when you need it and disappears when you don’t-no persistent sidebar nagging you like every other “AI browser” out there. Singh has plans to support other on-device models like Meta’s Llama and bring-your-own-key cloud options down the road.
The only downside is you have to pay $4.99 upfront with no trial period. I ran into some bugs right away-gmail wouldn’t stay logged in and gave me error that I wasn’t using the correct browser-which gave me pause. However, when I reached out to the developer, he replied within hours. That responsiveness, combined with the fact that a teenager built something Apple and The Browser Company apparently couldn’t be bothered to make, is the kind of story that makes me want to stick around and see what he has in store next. iPhone and Mac versions are supposedly coming later this year.
CARROT Weather does weather apps better than anyone. No one else comes close. Part of me doesn’t like paying for a weather app, it feels wrong somehow, like paying for air-but CARROT is just too damn good. The design is gorgeous, the functionality is deep, and the access to different weather data sources like Apple Weather, AccuWeather, and Foreca means I can find the most accurate forecast for my area. The recent CarPlay integration is a nice bonus, and the snarky personality keeps weather checking from being completely boring. Plus it’s privacy-first, which matters when you’re sharing your location data.
Screens 5 has become my go-to for remote access. With Screens 5 and Tailscale, I can easily remote into any computer from my iPad regardless of where I am-the only thing holding me back is my internet connection. I wish it were flawless, but nothing in the remote desktop world ever is. Screens is still the best app for this scenario in the Apple ecosystem. The Tailscale integration bypasses all the port-forwarding headaches that used to make remote access a nightmare, and the redesigned toolbar makes it actually usable on an iPad in ways earlier versions never managed.
Apps I No Longer Support
Orion Browser breaks my heart because I really want to like it. I love the idea of building a WebKit browser that lets users on iPadOS access Chrome extensions or Firefox plugins. And the ability to use a custom user agent is glorious for tricking websites into thinking you’re on a desktop. However, it’s just too damn buggy. I know there’s a paid version that gets you access to their betas and direct feedback with their small team of developers. But I don’t want to have to pay for the privilege of being their personal guinea pig. Maybe one day they’ll work out the bugs, but I’m no longer going to wait around for that to happen.
Fantastical (App Store) no longer seems useful to me. The idea of being able to type a meeting using natural language works in theory, but not always in practice. Also, for what they charge, I’m better off using Apple’s native calendar app or Google Calendar for free. The subscription model that crept in years ago still bothers me, and the features that require it don’t justify the cost when the free alternatives have caught up. Next.
Apple Journal disappointed me thoroughly. I was excited last year when Apple finally released this for desktop and iPadOS. Instead, it’s very much half-baked. The editor is just a vanilla text editor with no markdown or rich text support. For a billion-dollar company like Apple, they need to do better. This is insulting, to be honest. The suggestions feature that pulls from your photos and location is clever, but the actual writing experience is so limited that I’ve gone back to using Drafts to compose entries and then pushing them to Journal. Which defeats the entire purpose.
That’s where I’ve landed for now. Some of these will probably change by this time next year-they always do. But right now, this combination makes my iPad feel like the productivity tool Apple keeps promising it can be, rather than the compromised halfway device it often feels like in practice.