There is no real alternative to the Apple iPad in the tablet space. Together with Apple Pencil and other accessories, the iPad has been the de-facto choice for professionals, consumers, and students to take notes, show creativity, and get work done on a big screen. If you are a student planning to get one or have already bought one, check out the best iPad apps for you.
We have included a finance tracker, a note-taking app, a data management tool, a programming app, and more in the list below. There is something for every student.
1. Obsidian
Don’t dismiss Obsidian as a regular note-taking app based on Markdown files. The app offers much more than that. You can connect your notes and check them out in a graph view using Obsidian. It mimics how our brain functions and allows users to connect thoughts.
The developers recently released a live preview, and now Obsidian is a joy to use without looking at those markdown symbols. The app relies on plugins to improve functionality. The company offers a few plugins, to begin with, and you can download third-party plugins from developers as well.
Most essential features are free to use. Obsidian Sync is priced at $8 per month, but you can use iCloud to store your vaults and utilize multi-platform sync functionality without paying anything.
Obsidian is available on iPad, iPhone, Mac, Windows, and Android.
➤ Download – Obsidian
2. Wallet by Budegetbackers
Students need to keep a close eye on spending and expenses. While you can use an Excel sheet, it’s an old-school method and takes too much time. Instead, you can use Wallet and track your monthly budget in real-time.
Apart from the beautiful UI, Wallet offers deep insights into your spending habits with charts and graphs. The app supports multiple currencies and allows premium users to connect to their local bank as well.
Another neat feature is group sharing. You can create a wallet, add other users, and keep track of expenses simultaneously.
Wallet is available on iPhone, iPad, Web, and Android. The premium plan starts at $5.99 per month or $21.99 billed annually.
➤ Download – Wallet
3. Bear Notes
If Obsidian is too complicated for you, shift your attention to Bear Notes. It offers an intuitive UI, dozens of theming options, password-protection, and much more.
The app supports iPadOS widgets to view your notes right from the iPad home screen. For organizing your notes, you can use tags and folders. The export options are one of the best we have seen for a note-taking app. Bear can export notes in HTML, PDF, DOCX, MD, JPG, and even EPUB format.
The company is currently working on Bear 2.0 to bring a brand-new editor, table of contents, and many more requested features. Bear Pro is priced at $0.99 per month or $9.99 per year.
➤ Download – Bear Notes
4. Notion
Notion is one of the must-have iPad apps for Students. It is a modular productivity tool to manage everything in one place.
You can add notes, manage projects, plan the following weekend, outstation trips, create a resume, keep track of your university schedule, add reminders, and much more. The possibilities are endless here. You can invite others to your Notion page and start making edits in real-time. We would advise using built-in templates to get started with this app quickly.
Notion is entirely free to use for students. Give it a try from the link below and start organizing your life.
➤ Download – Notion
5. Readwise
Readwise allows you to collect saved information from Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, Instapaper, Pocket, Twitter, Medium, Goodreads, and other sources into a single place.
We often highlight content, bookmark articles, save Twitter threads, and then forget to read them later. Readwise collects all the data from their respective sources to view them in the app.
You can also manually add things to remember. Readwise is a cross-platform solution, and it deserves a place on your iPad home screen if you consume a lot of articles, books, and Twitter content throughout the day.
➤ Download – Readwise
6. Journey
Journey is one of the best Journal apps on iPad. Day One is another strong contender, but it’s limited to the Apple ecosystem only. Journey is a cross-platform solution and is available on the web as well.
As for the list of features, you can add new entries, attach memories, use the calendar view to jump to a specific data entry, and create a habit to jot down a day’s routine in the app. Our favorite part is maps integration. It gives deep insights when traveling to different places around the world. You can check where and when the specific Journal entry was created with beautiful memories on the map.
Journey Premium is priced at $30 per year. The company regularly runs discounts and offers. You might be able to grab the yearly subscription at half the price.
➤ Download – Journey
7. Pixelmator
Pixelmator nails the photo editing experience on iPad. The app features over 30 desktop-class color adjustments, support for over 600 RAW image formats, including Apple ProRAW, and seamless integration with iCloud Photos.
Pixelmator has all the editing tools you can ask for. The long list includes the ability to remove objects, several built-in effects, crop tools, white balance adjustments, and more.
The company claims to have built the app from a group for iPhone and iPad, and it does show in the execution. Unlike the Adobe suite of apps, Pixelmator is a one-time purchase at $10 on iPad.
➤ Download – Pixelmator
8. Craft
While Craft isn’t as powerful as Notion, the app is still worth checking out. First, Craft is built natively for iPad (unlike Notion), and it looks more visually pleasing than other alternatives.
The idea is the same as other note-taking apps. You can create multiple folders, organize tasks, notes, documents, to-dos, insert tables, and more. It’s a fresh take on documents and if you prefer aesthetics over function, go ahead choose Craft instead of other modular productivity apps.
If we have to nitpick, we would like to see support for tags in future updates and a native app for Windows.
➤ Download – Craft
9. Mimo
If you plan to pursue a career in software development, Mimo should be high on your iPad apps list. It teaches you to build apps and websites and makes learning to code more effortless than ever.
Mimo is an effective way to learn programming languages such as Python, JavaScript, HTML, SQL, and more. The company offers different programming courses and lessons suitable for everyone.
➤ Download – Mimo
10. Airtable
Airtable is yet another modular productivity tool designed to take on Google Sheets. It’s a modern database app that’s easy to use and understand.
Using Airtable, you can create flexible checklists, organize collections, ideas, manage customers, contacts, and do much more based on your requirements. Airtable offers templates as well. Pick one, and you are good to go with custom database management on iPad.
➤ Download – Airtable
We have created a similar list of top apps for the M1 MacBook as well. Check the post to learn about the 25 best apps for M1 Macs.
Which apps are you planning to download on iPad? Are you using other apps to manage your busy schedule at university? Share your picks in the comments section below.
