The best iPad Pro apps for Apple Pencil

(Image credit: Procreate, Notability, Concepts, Adobe)

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Note-taking apps
Digital art apps
Sketching apps
3D design apps
Colouring apps
Games

Installing the best iPad Pro apps for the Apple Pencil will optimise your tablet and stylus, be it for creating digital art, editing images, note-taking or pure relaxation. Pairing the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil taps into a whole new level of productivity and your iPad Pro experience, but there are certain apps that work best.

In this guide, I've chosen the best iPad Pro apps for Apple Pencil. I've experimented with a number of apps, perfectly suited to creative outlets from sketching to 3D design, to find out how well they work with Apple's stylus. The apps have been evaluated based on features, usefulness, compatibility with the Apple Pencil and performance. In some cases, I've conducted more in-depth reviews so look out for the linked review for more details.

I have divided the guide into sections. You can follow the links at the side of this page to jump straight to the section you want, or scroll down to browse our full pick of the best iPad Pro apps for Apple Pencil. All of these apps are compatible with the latest iPad Pros combined with Apple Pencil 2, and many will work fine with other iPads and Apple Pencil 1, too – we've noted the operating system requirements in each case. If you need help working out which iPad is which, see our list of all of the current iPad generations and take a look at the best iPad accessories too.

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Nebo is the go-to app for digital note-taking and is praised highly for its handwriting recognition. It has the ability to understand a whopping 66 languages and can even translate your handwritten notes into a format that can be sent as an email – pretty nifty. Using Apple Pencil, you can also create a range of shapes and sketches, making digital notes that we found feels almost as natural as taking notes on paper.

Bear has apps for macOS, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, plus a browser extension, and you can seamlessly sync your notes across all of your Apple devices via iCloud (though you'll need the pro subscription to do that). The pro version also gives you extra export options, encryption and password-protection or unlock using Face or Touch ID. Just bear in mind (no pun intended) that this is an intentionally minimalist option – there's no formatting panel for example. If you do need more features, consider an app like GoodNotes or Evernote (see below).

Now on its fifth iteration, GoodNotes is one of the most popular iPad Pro apps for Apple Pencil for note taking. It turns your iPad into digital paper, offering a lot of freedom to create searchable handwritten notes. This is a note-taking app that goes well beyond a basic pad to scrawl on – it can handle everything from equations to mind maps, and its handwriting-to-text conversion is one of the best we've seen.

Finally, the last in our pick of the best note-taking apps for Apple Pencil is LiquidText, which is a handy tool for annotating while reading. The app allows the annotation of PDFs, Word and Powerpoint documents and even web pages. It's a great option for active reading, allowing you to highlight sections of what you're reading to come back to later or collapse parts of the document so you can cross reference separate sections.

In fact, we found we forget all that technical stuff when we experienced the joy of sketching with a 6B pencil, turning it flat to block in areas of shade, or playing about with paints, really connecting with the work itself. When we tested Procreate 5.2, we were blown away by its new 3D painting features (including compatibility with other 3D apps like Zbrush and Blender). To learn more about those and the other updates, see our hands-on Procreate 5.3 review.

Adobe's Illustrator CC remains the industry-standard software for vector art, so it stands to reason that the iPad version is a great addition for the Apple Pencil, allowing you to design on the go with your Apple device. Though it's a streamlined version of the desktop software, in our Illustrator for iPad review, we found, it still works very well, and it can hold up as a standalone program (we tested a full version of Illustrator for iPad on the 11-inch iPad Pro (M1, 2021) using an Apple Pencil 2.)

You can add effects such as point gradients, radial repeats, patterns, and symmetry, and invite others to edit your projects, too. Of course, there's seamless cloud integration so you can work across your Creative Cloud apps. There's also community support accessible via live streams on the app, including tutorials and inspiration from professionals. See below for the best current prices on an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, which includes Illustrator in all its versions.

Astropad was built by former Apple engineers with the objective of turning the iPad Pro into a graphics tablet for the Mac. When we first tested it (see our Astropad 2.0 review), we found that they certainly succeeded. Apple has its own Side Car feature, but that's pretty limited when it comes to the wealth of functionality you want to get from the Apple Pencil. Downloading Astropad and its free Mac companion app allows you to treat your iPad just like a graphics tablet.

We haven't been exactly blown away by Photoshop for iPad, but it's getting better – Curves and Subject Select tools have been added since the initial release, and it seems pretty clear that Adobe will be improving on the app. The app's useful for composite and retouch workflows (making selections, masking, blend modes, painting and adjustment layers and so on) on the go, and the app can handle a heavy workload so there's no danger of overloading it. See our full Photoshop for iPad review for more details.

Fully optimised for iPad without compromising on power, we think the Affinity Designer for iPad offers the functionality of a professional desktop app, adapted to a tablet workflow. We especially like the seamless switching between drawing modes and the extensive import/export modes. Best of all, you can get it for a one-off cost rather than a subscription. See our Affinity Designer for iPad review for more details.

Another one from Serif, Affinity Photo is a fantastic Photoshop alternative thanks to its solid toolset and one-off cost rather than a subscription. The iPad version – in fact it's been used by Apple to demo the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. The app is compatible with earlier iPad models, but paired with an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, that Affinity Photo really comes alive, taking full advantage of the Pencil's pressure and angle sensitivity.

The stalwart iOS bitmap editor Pixelmator is another of the best iPad Pro apps for Apple Pencil for when it comes to creating digital art. It's a mature, well-developed app that offers natural media drawing tools that work well with the Apple Pencil. Pixelmator allows you to tweak colours either by applying Instagram-style filters, or with sliders for brightness, contrast, saturation, RGB and white balance – or indeed by tweaking the curves.

We found that pairing Pixelmator with the Apple Pencil works very well when it comes to doing touch-ups or object isolation. The touch-up controls – repair, dodge, burn, sharpen, saturate and more – are easy to apply with the Pencil especially given its precision. When painting out backgrounds this precision, plus the various different eraser types available, are hugely welcome. If we have one criticism, it's that we'd like the option of pressure-sensitivity to affect the size of an eraser rather than its opacity. See our Pixelmator review for more info (we reviewed Pixelmator 2.2, – the app has been updated since then.)

The desktop-style UI means an Apple Pencil is virtually essential here unless you have particularly slim and pointed fingertips. But once you've familiarized yourself with the fiddly buttons and menus, you have a feature-dense drawing app to use. There are many cheaper apps, but if you specialise in this area of art and design, there are few better and with such a vast repertoire of tools. See our roundup of the best Clip Studio Paint tutorials if you want to improve your skills.

Take a look through the online support files and you'll learn how initially simple-looking tools can be used to create graphs, org charts and Venn diagrams, to easily duplicate shapes, link shapes with lines (with optional arrows at one or both ends) and much more. Paper doesn't demand the kind of precision offered by the Apple Pencil, but the stylus is a very welcome addition, and the slightly cartoonish media work great with its sensors.

Although Adobe's Illustrator is now available for the iPad (see above), some creatives still swear that Graphic is the best vector drawing app available on iOS. This app offers a host of brushes and tools, but it also packs in some other useful features including geometry settings pane with -/+ nudge buttons, three and four-finger tap gestures to undo/redo. You can also customise the screen tap gestures to perform whatever actions you find most help your workflow.

Drawing Desk is a training app that teaches you how to draw through a clever follow and replicate system; the app sketches first and you follow its lines. This could be terrible, but in practice Drawing Desk is an excellent app that doesn't just teach how to lay down lines, but how to build up figures from primitives and gauge perspective and posing in character art. Essentially, it's a great drawing app because it teaches the fundamentals.

The app itself is a little complex to get your head around, as it's free to download to get the basic app and then buy in-app courses to learn unique skills, for example there's a whole series dedicated to drawing Marvel characters. You can also draw and sketch freely without any lessons or guides, which also now features some handy AI tools for creating line art from paintings or removing backgrounds. There's also a monthly and annual subscription if you don't the hassle of in-app purchases. Read my hands on with Drawing Desk for more details.

The best iPad Pro apps include a sketching tool for everyone. Linea Sketch is one of the best for creatives that want something more powerful than a basic pen-and-paper app but more streamlined than fully featured painting and drawing engines like Affinity Designer or Procreate. Eschewing the infinite canvas of some of its rivals, Linea Sketch opts for a fixed canvas and familiar drawing layers that can be repositioned anywhere in an infinite layer stack.

It doesn't go over the top with tools but still offers several pens, colour palettes and background textures, plus there's a transform tool, automatic ruler, grid tool, which gives you backgrounds for note-taking, drawing and user interface design, plus other useful additions. You can share work via the usual applications and export in Photoshop's PSD as well as JPG and PNG file formats. Some of the premium features have a cost but they're reasonably priced, making this is a pleasingly pared-back app that won't weigh heavily on your pocket or on your iPad's processor.

Shapr3D is sensibly offered for free as an entry point so you can learn the ropes of the application. The free version is limited to low-resolution exports and a maximum of two designs but it still gives you access to all the modelling tools. The Pro version costs a fairly reasonable $25 per month (or $240 billed annually) to unlock features professional features, including import and export of images, and to desktop CAD formats.

Forger brings most of the features of Autodesk Mudbox from the desktop to a tablet format, setting the standard for tablet-based sculpting software and showcasing how the addition of touch-sensitive hardware can make a real difference to 3D creativity. The brainchild of the artist Javier Edo, it offers a huge volume of brush, stroke and transform operations, which compare well to any desktop sculpting application.

Forger imports and exports OBJ and STL files and has a very intuitive interface tailored specifically for the iPad. There are left/right-handed UI modes and an easily movable camera. Panning, rotating and zooming is easy and sculpting can be performed symmetrically, using masks and layers, with the ability to apply clear, grow, shrink, invert, blur and sharpen masks. You can merge and split meshes, and reapply symmetry with multiple undo levels.

Even if you're a bit clumsy, your lines get smoothed into flowing curves, and with practice, it's possible to create some elegant, organic forms at speed. The precision of the Apple Pencil's tip make this process easier. It might be frustrating for highly technical engineering work, but you could use this as a tool to get down an initial concept down before exporting to IGES or OBJ files to develop it further in other apps. You can also import and open .SKP files directly in uMake.

The iPad Pro and Apple Pencil 2 combination isn't only great for work and productivity. You can also use it to relax, and colouring has become a popular form of relaxation for adults. Lake, which is also available for the iPhone, offers colouring book sheets in all kinds of styles from artists all over the world. It's very simply: you use the colour wheel to select the colour you want to use and then get colouring. There are also optional audio effects which we found made it even more relaxing to use

Part of the joy of Donut County is its simple art direction and pastel colour palette, but there's also a left-field sense of humour at play. Every time the hole gobbles up items, animals and people it grows, combing 'eaten' things reveals some weird and wonderful effects, whole stuff you've collected can be hurled back out of the hole to solve puzzles. Deceptively simple in art and design, Donut County is a rewarding game about holes that need filling.

A 2022 Apple Design Awards finalist, Tint is a beautiful-looking colour-mixing puzzle to play with Apple Pencil. You need to mix watercolours to match the colours in origami shapes while the weather changes and bird tweet. Available through Apple Arcade, this is a game with no rush and no points to be won, making for a soothing experience. The developers are continuing to add more levels, so it should offer hours of relaxation.

Blek is a drawing game that's a little like Brain dots above but even more fiendish. In this minimalist game, you need to hit coloured circles while avoiding obstacles by drawing a shape that travels across the screen in a loop following your gestures. You have to be very precise – while there are plenty of solutions, draw the wrong angle and you'll miss your target, hit an obstacle or spin off into nothing. It's hard and addictive but also magically relaxing to watch, and the minimalist design looks wonderfully elegant.

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A veteran from the days of the 8-bit ZX Spectrum, Orestis is always interested in the fastest, slickest way to make computers do new and exciting things.

With contributions from

Ian DeanEditor, Digital Arts & 3D

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The best iPad Pro apps for Apple Pencil available now

The best iPad Pro apps for note-taking

01. Notability

02. Nebo: Notes and PDF annotations

03. Bear

04. GoodNotes 5

05. Evernote

06. LiquidText

The best iPad Pro apps for digital art

07. Procreate

08. Illustrator for iPad

09. Art Set 4

10. Inspire Pro

11. Astropad

12. Adobe Fresco

13. Photoshop for iPad

14. Affinity Designer for iPad

15. Affinity Photo

16. Pixelmator

17. Clip Studio Paint

18. Paper

19. Graphic for iPad

The best iPad Pro apps for Apple Pencil for sketching

20. Sketch Club

21. Drawing Desk

22. Autodesk SketchBook

23. Linea Sketch

24. Concepts

25. Tayasui Sketches

The best iPad Pro apps for Apple Pencil for 3D design

26. Shapr3D

27. Forger

28. uMake

The best iPad Pro Apple Pencil apps for colouring

29. Lake: Colouring Books and Journal

30. Pigment Adult Coloring Book

The best iPad Pro games for Apple Pencil

31. Layton: Curious Village in HD

32. Donut County

33. Brain dots

34. Tint

35. Blek

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