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.
