15 Essential Apps to Install on Your New iPad

Josh Valcarcel / WIRED

This year the Festivus fairy dropped off a new iPad Air 2. Lucky you. On top of being an excellent piece of hardware, the iPad also offers the most robust selection of tablet-dedicated apps. But navigating all those apps and figuring out which to populate your home screen with isn’t always easy. Let us help.

While we’ve listed some old favorites here, we’ve left out many of the more obvious options (Yes, of course you’ll want to download things like Facebook, Twitter, and Netflix, if you use those services). These are the apps that exemplify the iPad experience and take advantage of new tools offered in iOS 8. Most of these apps are free downloads, but if you grab each item on this list, it will cost you a grand total of $18. With a couple of initial in-app purchases and subscriptions to make the experience sweeter (and support the talented developers who make these fine apps), your grand total goes up to $27.

So here are WIRED’s 15 essential apps to install on your new iPad. If we’ve left out any of your own must-haves, feel free to share them in the comments.

News

These apps help you stay on top of what’s shared, what’s trending, and what’s news with gorgeous Retina-optimized UIs.

Screenshot: WIRED

Flipboard

Flipboard [Free] was the first iPad-first magazine, fusing shares from your favorite social media outlets with interesting news and articles curated by the app’s team. Flipboard continues to be a visually stunning way to absorb popular and trending articles. Most recently, the app added a magazine creation feature so you can curate your own collections of topical content, and the ability to follow niche topics of interest, from “zoology” to “cyclocross racing” (there are 30,000 to choose from).

Digg

We really like Digg [Free] for staying up to date on world events. The app surfaces popular articles based on their social media impact as well as items that are hand-selected by Digg’s editors. You can also follow your favorite publications and writers in Digg Reader, a streamlined RSS-style feed. If you don’t have time to read now, you can read them later in the app, or on Instapaper, Readability, or Pocket.

Productivity and Creativity

There are some great options for those looking to use their tablet as a laptop replacement, or create their next masterpiece.

iA Writer

Yes, there’s finally Microsoft Word for the iPad now, and Apple’s iWork suite provides a feature-laden platform for all your word processing, spreadsheet editing, and presentation-making needs. But sometimes, simple is better, and that’s why iA Writer [$5] shines. It’s a straightforward text editor that lets you focus on writing, not formatting or fancy, distracting features. It syncs with iCloud and Dropbox for cross-platform file and folder sharing, and it includes a keyboard extension for easier navigation and punctuation key access. You can only save .txt or .md files (no .doc or .docx) though, but that’s fine, because you can always paste text into another app later if it needs to be prettified.

Screenshot: WIRED

Yahoo Weather

Yahoo Weather [Free] is a beautiful way to get the day’s forecast whether you’re swiping to peep its handy Notification Center widget, or checking the app itself. It opens to a subtly animated fullscreen image representing the day’s weather (Today: Fog blowing across an image of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco) with the current temperature, high and low for the day, and highs and lows for different parts of the day onscreen. Swiping upwards reveals a plethora of additional information like the 10 day forecast, wind and humidity stats, the UV index, and a satellite map of your area. The only problem with this app: occasional intrusive ads within the expanded day view.

PCalc

The iPad, for reasons unknown, does not come with a built-in calculator app. I know. It baffles us too. But that’s OK, because PCalc [$7] is an amazing download for your number crunching needs. It’s not just a calculator, it’s a tool for anything that has to do with numbers: unit conversions, binary or hexadecimal code, as well as more complex engineering and scientific notations. The interface is completely customizable too, from the colors and themes to the button shapes and fonts. It also has a handy Notification Center widget. If you balk at the price, just think of how much you’re saving over buying a real, physical calculator.

Paper by Fifty Three

Paper [Free, in-app purchases] is a polished, elegant app for touchscreen sketching. You can use your finger to use the app’s array of virtual pens, pencils, and paintbrushes, but for even more control, you can use a stylus. Creations are stored in notebooks, but should you want it to transcend the digital experience, you can also have your work printed and mailed. We recommend grabbing the $4 Essentials in-app purchase to expand your drawing options beyond the minimal offerings of the basic version of the app.

Games

It’d be a shame not to use that 2048 x 1536 display and A8X processor (A7 for the iPad mini) to render gorgeous, entertaining games.

Monument Valley

Winner of Apple’s 2014 Design Award, Monument Valley [$4] is an exceedingly creative, exceedingly beautiful game based around guiding the main character, princess Ida, through impossible architecture: optical illusions, deep chasms, and lava pits. The only complaint about Monument Valley seems to be that the game ends too soon, which, luckily, is a problem that’s fixable: When you beat the game, you can grab additional levels for $2.

Screenshot: WIRED

Asphalt 8: Airborne

Asphalt 8: Airborne [Free, in-app purchases] is a car racing game that uses Apple’s new Metal engine for killer graphics. You’ll take control of one of 56 different cars—including the Bugatti Veyron and Pagoni Zonda R—on a wild ride off road and over ramps to perform tricks like 360-degree jumps and barrel rolls. You can race up to eight opponents at a time in locales ranging from Venice to Death Valley. And if you get serious about the game, you will eventually have to make some in-app purchases to beat them.

Audio

Whether sitting beside you at your desk or hooked up to a Bluetooth speaker, you’ll want a handful of apps for listening (or creating) music and podcasts.

Spotify

While I personally still love Rdio, Spotify [Free download, $1 special for 3 months of Premium] has a lot of features that make it a compelling, complete choice for streaming music on your iPad. With a music library of more than 20 million songs, you can easily add songs and albums from your favorite bands, or explore new music based on your mood, activity (are you working out? at a party?), or a musical artist through the app’s extensive playlists. The app’s dark backgrounded color scheme is also nice, because if you are playing the iPad DJ at a party, a glaring white tablet screen is kind of a buzzkill. You’ll want to upgrade to premium to eliminate annoying ads in between songs, and up the audio quality.

Overcast

Overcast [Free] is powerful, simple podcast player. Through its intuitive orange, white, and grey-themed layout, you can search, browse, and download new podcasts with an option to get a push notification every time a new episode lands. The app has a robust recommendation section (bolstered by Twitter) and lets you can create custom, prioritized playlists. It has a couple of other nifty features too, like Smart Speed, which algorithmically eliminates silent pauses in podcasts, helping you save time without compromising on audio quality.

Auxy

If you’ve ever fancied yourself a Daft Punk or a John Lennon, you should download Auxy [Free] to create your music. The app has a straightforward interface that lets you lay down drum beats, piano chords, and synth melodies so you can build your jams piece by piece. There are options for looping segments, adjusting filters, and adding delay. It’s a bit lighter weight than Apple’s Garage Band, a viable alternative, but this is good if you don’t have much experience with tablet music making.

Video

While using your iPad as a camera is still a faux pas, the iPad’s screen does make an excellent canvas for video editing (just Airdrop video from your iPhone to your tablet).

Screenshot: WIRED

Spark

Spark [$2] is a cleverly styled video recorder and editor. When you do record with the iPad (sigh), each clip you shoot is represented as a colored segment on a circular status bar located in the center of the screen (but you can also tap to import video clips from your camera roll). You can adjust the starting and ending point of a clip on another circle-shaped menu bar, and you can change the order of clips by dragging and dropping them in place. Add a filter, if you choose, and background music to complete your video. It’s quick and fun to use.

Magisto

You know those heartwarming compilation videos apps like Facebook make for you? Magisto [Free, $5/month subscription] is like that, but you select the photos and videos yourself. After you choose a video style (which dictates various filters and photo/video transitions), pick an audio soundtrack, and add a title. The app uses facial recognition and other action-detecting features to put your nostalgia-tinged video together. For the most part, the resulting videos are cute and exceedingly shareable (as a link on the Magisto website). If you want to create longer movies or have the ability to save your video to your iPad rather than within the app itself, you’ll need to subscribe for $5 a month or $15 a year. Or pay $1 per movie.

Shopping

About 30 percent of online shoppers shop mobile only these days. These apps take the chore out of product discovery and purchasing.

Catalog Spree

There’s still something about browsing through a catalog and seeing what a company’s products look like in a “real” setting. If you want to cut down on paper waste but still get that experience, you can use Catalog Spree [Free]. This app offers digital catalogs for over 350 brands. You can swipe through their pages, tap to buy a product or save it to a shopping list, or add products to a watch list so you’re alerted when it goes on sale. You can also get access to exclusive deals, but they aren’t always as good as what you’d find in the paper version of the catalog for some reason.

Pinterest

While Pinterest [Free] is a huge repository for Etsy creations and impossible-to-emulate crafts, it’s also a great place to discover (and then buy) items for the home, your friends, or yourself. You can plan your dream living room, ogling the app’s jigsaw of large tiled images, and then acquire the items piece by piece. As you pin and re-pin, you can be as social or hermit-like as you like, sharing your boards so others can browse, or keeping them private. The iPad interface is great for this sort of product browsing.