best travel apps ipad

7 Useful Apps Every Traveler Should Know About

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Technology continues to make travel easier for millions of people around the globe. New apps offer travelers fresh ways to research a destination, connect with fellow globetrotters, communicate with locals, and track their flights. As a full-time digital nomad , I’ve learned the importance of having the right tools at your disposal when on the road.

Over the past few years, I’ve visited dozens of countries, flown hundreds of thousands of miles, and tested countless apps to find the ones that prove to be the most helpful. And while tools like Meetup, Google Maps, Google Translate, currency converters, and vacation rental , airline, and hotel–specific apps are in fact indispensable on most trips, I find that many of the best travel apps are still undiscovered by my fellow travelers.

Below, seven travel apps that make life on the go markedly easier (and more fun), from real-time flight trackers to photo-sharing gems—all of these apps are free, but some have paid pro versions worth considering. Don’t think these apps are only for full-time travelers—they prove useful for every type of traveler, whether you're in a brand-new destination or back for a return visit.

Discover the best apps for travelers:

Apps for flying, apps for exploring, apps for photo sharing.

My favorite app on this list is Flighty, a must-have for any frequent flier . The free version is fantastic, but I recommend splurging for the premium version, which gives you even more useful information and comes at a reasonable cost of $48 per year. The functionality it provides more than justifies the price.

The free version allows you to input all future flights plus past journeys you've taken within the last year. It provides updated information if any schedule changes occur to upcoming flights and allows you to track all the miles you’ve flown in one place.

The other main benefit is that it allows you to share your flight information with friends and family members who are also on Flighty. They will receive real-time updates about your flight without you having to text them. My parents love to make sure I’m safe so they appreciate getting detailed information about my travels—even while I’m in the air.

Flightradar24 is a favorite app among fellow aviation geeks. It lets you track almost any aircraft you see in the air throughout the day or night. You can track your own flight, a friend's flight, or any plane you see in real-time. It shares plenty of cool data, like the altitude, speed, arrival and departure airports and times, and tail number.

There are tons of eSIM apps on the market, but Airalo is probably my favorite, with digital SIM cards available for dozens of countries. I find it to be the most reliable and offers the best data packages. It can be a little pricey, but it is the best option if you’re only taking short trips. Holafly is another eSIM app that offers unlimited data and works well, but I find the app to be much more glitchy than Airalo and would recommend using the desktop version.

This one is for the planner of the group. Wanderlog merges the best of a bunch of different apps into one. Imagine an app that lets you plan a trip with ease: collaborate with friends as if you’re on Google Docs, manage expense tracking like Splitwise, and have a central place for your reservations, checklists, and more. Tripit is a similar travel planner app, so you can download both and get a feel for which interface you like better.

Been allows you to track the countries you’ve visited and make a wish list of places you can’t wait to cross off your travel bucket list . It gives you information like the percentage of the globe you’ve been to and shows you a world map of your trips. It’s always fun to add in a new country whenever I reach my destination.

This app was introduced to me by fellow nomads I met at a cafe in Montevideo, Uruguay . It automatically tracks your route across the world, allowing you to quickly upload pictures throughout your travels that can be viewed by anyone who has access to your profile. It’s an excellent way to share important moments with loved ones without needing to send photos to each person individually. Users can also create easily accessible guides filled with up-to-date information to help you plan your own trip.

Steller is another app that a friend recently introduced me to, and I’ve quickly fallen in love with it. It uses a combination of AI and user experiences to help you plan trips around the globe. From recommendations of things to see, like the Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires or the Royal Palace of Naples, to full guidebooks created by users, you can get inspired, book experiences, and discover hidden gems within this app.

30 essential travel apps every traveler needs before their next trip

When it comes to planning and taking a vacation, travelers rely on their phones now more than ever.

Travel apps are a source of inspiration and are extremely useful for booking and managing logistics — even making restaurant reservations or finding a great fitness class wherever in the world you're flying next.

From apps that help with everything from day-of hotel bookings and last-minute flight changes to those that serve as guidebooks and foreign-language dictionaries, travel is infinitely easier thanks to technology.

Apps can help you navigate a new city, make currency conversions, pack a perfect suitcase and even provide on-the-ground local expertise. Whatever you need when you hit the road, there's an app for that.

We've rounded up the most-loved apps here at TPG. Some may be obvious, and others more obscure, but either way, get ready to download.

Best apps for researching and booking trips

In addition to the apps for the airlines you fly most frequently and your favorite hotel brands, these apps can help you save money on flights and accommodations.

Hopper has changed in recent years from just offering a price prediction tool for flights to being a true online travel agency. The app helps travelers find the cheapest flights, hotels and rental cars.

Of course, Hopper also still offers its signature price prediction technology to help you plan out when to book, as well as travel protection options and a price freeze to help you lock in the lowest possible price on hotels and flights.

Kiwi is used mainly to book flights, but it also helps you book hotels (using its partnership with Booking.com) and car rentals (using its partnership with RentalCars.com).

Some of the app's most interesting features include the "Deals" section, which pulls in discounted flights, and the "Travel hacks" section, which includes options for hidden city ticketing, throwaway ticketing (making one-way flights more affordable) and free price alerts.

Hotel Tonight

A dream for last-minute travelers, Hotel Tonight ( now owned by Airbnb ) lets you book stays for the same evening up to a few months in advance in thousands of cities worldwide. Available hotel rooms are categorized into sections like basic, luxe, hip, charming and solid, so you can select what works for your vibe. Take advantage of the daily drop feature, where you swipe to find a personalized deal with a special price only valid for 15 minutes after unlocked.

At TPG, we love a good loyalty program, and HT Perks, the app's nine-level reward program, is extensive. Not unlike a video game, you "level up" by reaching specific spending thresholds on the app, and you'll gain access to perks like discounts, VIP customer support and credits. Also, your levels never expire, so you can only continue to move up.

To book home rentals instead of hotels, use the Airbnb app. After entering your destination and dates, you can filter results based on the home type, price, requisite amenities and more. If you find something you like, you can book directly through the app.

The app is ideal for managing your trips while on the road — you can access all your bookings under the "Trips" tab, where you can view your reservation (and the address or directions), contact the host or change your reservation. Once you have a booking, you can also explore and book local experiences in your destination, such as wine tastings, kayak tours, hikes, shows and concerts.

We can't talk about travel apps without mentioning the TPG App. Use it to track your credit card, airline and hotel points balances; earn points and miles efficiently through using the right credit card ; and research how many points or miles you'll need to book your dream getaway. You can even curate your own news feed so you see the news and advice that matters most to you first.

The TPG App is available for download on iOS . Android users can join the waitlist here .

Related: The TPG App has arrived — here's why you should download it now

Best apps for organizing a trip

From keeping all your documents in order to perfectly packing your suitcase without forgetting a thing, these are the best apps for organizing travel plans.

TripIt declutters your itineraries and documents by keeping them organized in one place. You can set your reservations to automatically send to TripIt, which lets you view travel confirmations, flight itineraries, tickets, hotel and Airbnb booking information, rental car reservations, ferry tickets and driving directions without ever leaving the app.

TripIt also makes it simple to share your trip plans with whoever picks you up from the airport or train station or anyone else who may need to coordinate with you. TripIt Pro subscriptions cost $49 per year and include extras like real-time flight alerts, security wait times, baggage claim information and updates on your loyalty reward programs.

Roadtrippers

Perfect for organizing that epic road trip you've always wanted to take, Roadtrippers plans out your driving route and lets you book hotels and activities along the way. The app is especially useful for finding interesting and off-the-beaten-path roadside attractions, cool restaurants and can't-miss landmarks you can bookmark.

A Roadtrippers Premium membership includes offline maps, live traffic information, overnight RV parking and more for $59.99 per year. For those looking to only venture on a few road trips per year, the app also offers a Pro ($49.99 per year) and Basic ($35.99 per year) membership.

PackPoint takes all the stress out of packing . The app shows you what to bring based on the length of your trip, the weather in your destination and any activities you're planning along the way. If you have access to laundry facilities at your destination, PackPoint even allows you to account for washing your clothes and wearing them multiple times.

Just download and install the app, type in the city you're visiting and plug in your travel details. So, stop waiting until the day before your trip — or the hours before you have to leave for the airport — and start packing now.

Best apps for navigating the airport and flights

Track flights, navigate airports and find airport lounges with these apps.

LoungeBuddy

LoungeBuddy offers access to premium airport lounges around the world, regardless of the airline or class you're flying. When you create a trip in the app and type in the credit cards you currently hold, it will tell you which lounges you have access to based on the airports you'll be transiting through and how to purchase access if you don't already have it.

You can purchase access on the day you're traveling or up to two months in advance if you're the plan-ahead type. If you prefer to search by lounge or lounge program, the app will tell you exactly what is needed to use them.

Priority Pass

Priority Pass offers access to more than 1,300 lounges worldwide and provides meal vouchers at select airport restaurants across the world for an annual fee starting at $99.

Several cards, including The Platinum Card® from American Express , the Capital One Venture X Rewards Credit Card and the Chase Sapphire Reserve , offer Priority Pass memberships for all cardholders (enrollment required). Otherwise, you'll have to pay an annual fee to be a member and, depending on your membership tier, a fee to enter each lounge on top of the annual fee.

To use the Priority Pass app, enter the name or code of the airport you're in, and Priority Pass will pull up the lounges or restaurants that you have access to, including photos, hours, amenities and specific location information. For more information on the Priority Pass Program and how to gain lounge access, click here . Enrollment is required for select benefits.

Related: The best credit cards for Priority Pass lounge access

FlightAware

The FlightAware app allows you to track flights online, see a live map of a flight and check on delays, cancellations and gate changes. This app is especially helpful if you have a tight connection or want to track your flight.

It's also useful when picking up friends and family at the airport, as you can track their flight and see updated landing times or delays. AvGeeks will enjoy digging into flight statistics, flight maps and community aviation discussions on the app.

Best apps to use during your flight

Timeshifter.

What better way to cure jet lag than with an app? Timeshifter actually helps you avoid jet lag long before your flight takes off and also offers inflight and post-flight suggestions. The app relies on neuroscience research about sleep and circadian rhythms to provide personalized recommendations, taking into consideration your age, gender and normal sleep patterns — as well as specifics about your trip and travel plans. Timeshifter maps out when you should avoid or seek light, take a nap or try to stay awake. It even tells you if you should consider supplementing with melatonin or caffeine.

Your first jet lag plan is free, then $9.99 per plan, or you can enjoy unlimited plans for a year for $24.99.

Flying can cause anxiety — or provide a welcome relief from constant contact with our digital devices. Either way, use travel as an opportunity to relax, meditate or listen to soothing sounds that will lull you to sleep or a deep, relaxed state. Or, perhaps, you'll simply find it helps pass the time during a long flight.

Calm offers meditations on topics such as self-awareness, calming anxiety, breathing, lowering stress levels and happiness, among others. The app also has music options for focusing, relaxing and sleeping, as well as stories for adults and content for kids.

A limited selection of meditations and music is available for free (which you can download to use when you're offline or in flight). The premium version of the app costs $14.99 per month or $69.99 annually.

OK, so Netflix isn't really a travel app, but it can be a lifesaver during a long flight on an aircraft without seatback inflight entertainment or at the airport during an unexpected flight delay or boring layover. If you have a Netflix account, the app allows you to download your favorite shows onto your device to watch offline.

Just make sure to download your shows while connected to Wi-Fi before flying and check them again preflight to make sure they haven't expired (you can usually renew any expired downloads, but you must be connected to Wi-Fi or data to do so). Monthly prices vary depending on the plan.

Another app that's not really a travel app, Spotify can still be incredibly useful during tedious travel moments — just pop in those noise-canceling headphones and listen to your favorite music, meditations, podcasts and more.

The app's Premium plans (prices vary) allow you to download all your content offline on your phone, so you'll have it during long flights or when you don't have data or Wi-Fi access. Whether you want to take a morning jog in Bali to your favorite tunes or pass the time with a podcast on the metro in Barcelona, Spotify has it all.

Best apps to use in your destination

From exchanging money and sightseeing to communicating and knowing all the local tips and tricks, you don't want to land in a foreign city for the first time without these key apps.

XE Currency Converter

The XE Currency Converter app quickly provides live, up-to-the-minute currency rates, then allows you to store and view them even when you're offline. You'll never need to wonder if you're really getting a good deal in another country if you have this app.

Google Translate

Google Translate is a translation app that allows you to do it all — translate into more than 100 languages by typing, access 59 languages offline, translate via photo, translate bilingual conversations and even use the handwriting tool to translate.

The app is simple to use, too, with icons at the top you can click on to draw, take a photo, speak or type.

Not quite sure how much to tip when traveling internationally? GlobeTips will advise you on how to tip appropriately in more than 200 countries. It also offers a tip calculator for easy math. Globe also has apps for currency conversion, unit conversion and more that may be useful for travelers.

Related: The ultimate guide to tipping while traveling

For travelers globe-trotting with friends and family members or simply splitting the cost between groups, Tricount calculates shared costs and splits bills so you don't have to think twice about who owes what. Just enter your trip and currency and invite your travel mates to join your trip.

Each time someone pays for something, you enter the amount in Tricount, and the app splits everything up. You can also snap and store photos of receipts in the app. At the end of your trip, it will show the balances of who owes who what, making it easy to settle up.

Metric Conversions

Never be baffled by Celsius temperatures or suitcase weight in kilograms again with the Metric Conversions app . Whether you're measuring flour to cook at your Airbnb, figuring out distances for your Europe road trip or deciding whether to take a sweatshirt with you during your walking tour of the Great Wall of China, this app has you covered with easy conversions in volume, weight, temperature, area and more.

Google Maps

Google Maps is essential when visiting a new city (or even for getting around your hometown). You can map locations, get directions (walking, driving, public transportation, ride-hailing services and beyond) and see how crowded your subway will be in select cities .

You can make restaurant reservations, save your favorite spots and read and write reviews of attractions, eateries, shops and more. Make sure to download specific city or area maps ahead of time for offline access if you know you'll be without internet at your destination. For obvious reasons, the app works best when your GPS is turned on.

WhatsApp is a handy messaging service for travelers abroad as it uses an internet connection to avoid SMS fees.

It works like most other messaging apps: You start by creating an account, then add your friends and family members to contact and voila! You're able to call, video chat and send messages, images, voice memos, gifs and files just as you would in, say, iMessage (but with Android users too). You can also download WhatsApp on your Windows or Mac computer.

Best apps for planning activities

Traveling is about more than just getting from point A to point B. If you're looking for activities to add to your itinerary, check out these apps.

Meetup is an app designed for interacting with locals and other travelers who have mutual interests or shared hobbies. Whether you're traveling or at home, take what you love and do more of it with Meetup.

The app shows you groups that are formed around particular interests in your city, including yoga, photography, cooking, wine tasting, hiking, cinema and other activities. You can join groups to get updates on particular events you may want to participate in. The app can even help with networking, as there are many groups dedicated to business and technology. You might even be able to join a coworking group. Travelers with kids can participate in family-friendly meetups, and it's a great way for solo travelers to make friends and connect with others.

TheFork is one of the most useful resources for making restaurant reservations in Europe. Similar to OpenTable or Resy, the app lets you browse different restaurants by category and make reservations. TheFork features more than 60,000 restaurants in cities like London, Madrid and Geneva, as well as spots outside of Europe like Sydney, Australia.

The biggest perk is that many restaurant reservations come with discounts — in some cases, you can get up to 50% off your meal just by reserving a table through TheFork. Since we here at TPG are always down for earning rewards, make sure to monitor your YUMS — TheFork's reward system. You'll earn YUMS with each reservation, and when you hit 1,000, you receive a discount on your bill. Foodie travelers should also consider downloading these apps , too.

Happy Cow helps vegan and vegetarian eaters locate more than 180,000 restaurants, coffee shops, bakeries, farmers markets and grocery stores in over 180 countries around the world. The app allows you to filter by not only vegan and vegetarian but also gluten-free and cuisine types. You can also read reviews and get recipes on the app as well.

The app does cost $3.99, but it's a one-time expense.

TripAdvisor

Besides reading reviews of restaurants, hotels and attractions, you can book almost anything on TripAdvisor, from vacation rentals and restaurant reservations to tours and tickets.

The app has grown to include almost all things travel, allowing you to search by destination or interest (like the outdoors, food and drink, family or by the water, for example), which can give you inspiration for a trip or help you get your activities, meals and accommodations organized before traveling or on the fly.

With over 400,000 curated trails, AllTrails can help you find the hike or walk perfect for you and your group. It's not just mountain trails — AllTrails offers city walks, too, like easy meanders through the Marais district in Paris or peaceful strolls through Bangkok's Lumpini Park in Thailand.

See photos, updated weather predictions and key information about each route and connect with other travelers through reviews and forums. Access to AllTrails+ is $35.99 per year, which offers perks like offline maps and wrong turn alerts.

Best apps for staying safe

Use these apps to stay safe when traveling.

Smart Traveler

Smart Traveler is a free service that offers tips and information specifically for U.S. travelers. You can see what visas and vaccines you'll need before traveling and where to find help if you need it during your trip.

Register your trip on the app, which gives your information to local embassies and consulates in your destination. If there's any kind of disaster or tragedy, the local embassy can contact you to see if you need help.

TripWhistle

Another app dedicated to keeping you safe, TripWhistle maps your location and allows you to easily text or send your GPS coordinates or location. It also provides emergency numbers for firefighters, medical personnel and police in nearly 200 countries. After all, 911 is only for U.S.-based emergencies: Each country has its own specific emergency number.

Yes, Uber (or any local ride-hailing service app) is convenient, but it may also keep you safe. Using this app when traveling means you'll never get stuck wandering around in an unfamiliar area late at night or have to deal with unscrupulous taxi drivers trying to scam you. Uber also has in-app safety features such as an emergency assistance button which will allow you to call local emergency services right in the app.

Best travel apps in 2021

Beat the traffic, avoid flight delays and find a place to stay on your next trip

The best travel apps are the ones that take all the stress out of a trip, freeing you up to enjoy the journey. And fortunately, you've got a lot of choices when it comes to finding apps that can help you plan your next getaway. 

You'll find everything from trip planners and itinerary generators to online marketplaces for flights and hotels in both the Play Store and Apple's store for apps. Combine one of the best travel apps with some great travel tech , and your chances for a smooth trip will increase dramatically.

• These are the best Android apps overall
• Get better trip photos with the best Android camera apps

Not sure where to look first? We've found a list of the best travel apps for when you're ready to hit the road again after sticking close to home for more than a year.

1. MyTSA (Free: Android; iOS)

Before you hit the road, make sure you've got MyTSA on your smartphone. The official app of the Transportation Security Administration isn't going to win any beauty contests, but it will let you check wait times at security checkpoints at major airpots. And that can help you plan on how much travel time you need to allow.

The app includes historical wait-time data while also giving you the option of checking crowd-sourced reports of how long security lines are at that moment. The ability to search what you can bring on a plane, get live assistance and find out info on the TSA PreCheck program make this a good app for travelers to keep handy on their smartphone.

Download MyTSA: Android , iOS

2. Expedia (Android, iOS: Free)

If you're a frequent traveller, you need a good all-in-one travel app, and Expedia is a tried-and-true option. You can book every aspect of your trip through Expedia, including hotels, flights and rental cars. The app also lets you bundle deals on travel and lodging, look for cruises, and research things to do when you arrive at your destination. 

If you're looking to stretch your travel budget even farther, Expedia promises exclusive deals for mobile users, with members of Expedia's rewards program enjoying additional perks. 

Download Expedia: Android , iOS

3. Flighty (iOS: Free)

There are flight trackers, and then there's Flighty, an iOS app for people who really want to know the location and arrival time of their plane. The free version of the app gives you basic flight-tracking tools, but pay up for a subscription ($8.99 a month or $49.99 per year), and you get access to more sophisticated features such as push notifications, syncing with TripIt or with calendars, and an assistant to help with your flight connections. 

Flighty also claims to be able to predict flight delays by monitoring inbound planes for 25 hours and monitoring FAA-mandated delays. You can check out the portions of the paid app for free during a 14-day trial.

Download Flighty: iOS

4. Hopper (Android, iOS: Free)

Another app bringing big data and predictive algorithms to the world of air travel is Hopper It uses a massive database of airline prices and historical trends to predict when prices to a destination are likely to be lowest, when they're likely to change, and the best time to buy a ticket for a particular date and destination. 

You can watch flights on specific dates or destinations, and the app will advise you whether it's worth it to buy now or to wait, tell you the dates when it's likely cheapest to fly, estimate changes in price, and notify you of price drops or rises. You can also save your payment details within the app for quick booking.

Download Hopper: Android , iOS

5. iExit (Android, iOS: Free)

If your travel plans involve a lot of driving, iExit works as a handy freeway exit guide, listing nearby highway exits, as well as the kind of businesses and amenities there are nearby. Need to gas up or find some good food or a place to stay for the night? iExit’s search tools come to the rescue, showing you nearby gas stations (with price data powered by GasBuddy), motels, and even deals and discounts from nearby businesses.

Download iExit: Android , iOS

6. Waze (Android; iOS)

Nothing gets a vacation off on the wrong foot like getting stuck in traffic. Waze can't eliminate the traffic, but it can help you get around any jams, especially if you're in an unfamiliar city. 

The navigation app feeds your smartphone real-time traffic information, based on reports from other Waze users. That data includes accidents, speed traps and other hazards that might keep you from getting to your destination in a timely fashion. 

Other features sure to impress travelers include automatic rerouting, cheap gas alerts and the ability to send your ETA to anyone waiting at your final stop.

Download Waze: Android , iOS

7. Skiplagged (Android, iOS: Free)

If you're traveling light and looking to save a few bucks, check out Skiplagged. It's a neat app that can keep your travel costs down by taking advantage of "hidden city flights", where flyers get off at a layover, instead of at the final destination. 

Enter your origin and destination, and Skiplagged will show you the cost of a direct flight, as well as any cheaper "hidden city" flights that have your intended destination as a layover. The caveat? Stick to carry-on luggage, as any checked-in bags will go all the way to the flight's final destination. 

Skiplagged also allows you to book hotels, including last-minute deals and special offers.

Download Skiplagged: Android , iOS

8. Flio (Android, iOS: Free)

Flio aims to be the all-in-one companion app for harried travelers making their way through airports worldwide. An official partner of 300 airports, Flio also has info on thousands more. That lets the app feature terminal maps, a boarding pass scanner, a flight tracker and directions to shuttle buses and booking options for everything from parking to lounge access. 

The app's sheer variety of services and features make it a great addition to the app toolkit of frequent fliers and vacationers alike.

Download Flio: Android , iOS

9. AtYourGate (Android, iOS: Free)

AtYourGate is another helpful airport companion that focuses more about retail opportunities while you're killing time waiting at the airport. If you need food, supplies (like say a phone charger to replace the one you forgot to pack), or last-minute gifts, you can browse the AtYourGate app for nearby shops and restaurants instead of having to wander around the airport. 

AtYourGate users can order food or other items, pay through the app, and even arrange for the item to be delivered to them right at their gate, lounge, or other location. AtYourGate currently operates in a select number of major airports, including JFK, La Guardia, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Portland, San Diego, and Newark.

Download AtYourGate: Android , iOS

10. Mobile Passport (Android, iOS: Free)

Mobile Passport is a U.S. Customs and Border Protection-approved app that helps speed you through lengthy immigration lines. It allows anyone with U.S. or Canadian passports to submit their passport control and customs declarations through the app, replacing paper forms and providing faster processing in a number of major US airports where the Mobile Passport service is supported. 

The app will save you a good amount of time in line, but it’s no reason to leave your physical passport at home. Mobile Passport is a companion app, not a replacement.

Download Mobile Passport: Android , iOS

11. TripIt (Android, iOS: Free)

TripIt promises to cut back on the travel hassle by consolidating your travel plans into a simple, convenient itinerary. Viewable online and synced to your cell phone, you can also share itineraries with your contacts. 

You just link your email account to TripIt, and the service will automatically dig through your inbox for reservation confirmations and other forms. Using that data, TripIt builds an organized itinerary of your flight boarding times, hotel check-ins and more. While TripIt is a free download, a $48.99 annual subscription gets you features like real-time flight alerts and updates on how long airport lines are.

Download TripIt: Android , iOS

12. App In The Air (Android, iOS: Free)

App In The Air is designed to help you through the entire process of your airplane flight, serving as a booking assistant that reminds you of your gate, ETA, check-in requirements, baggage tips, and more. 

The app condenses all of this important information so that it's easy to refer to at a glance, while also providing handy extras. You can view a summary of your airline's baggage rules (or even have an augmented reality overlay that you can use to measure your baggage to see if it will fit for carry-on or overhead guidelines). 

Travelers can integrate the app with TripIt, track loyalty rewards, view airplane amenities and even forward their details to their Apple Watch or Android Wear device. A premium subscription ($29.99 per year) includes real-time flight status updates, automated check-ins, and more.

Download App In The Air: Android , iOS

13. GasBuddy (Android, iOS: Free)

If road trips are more your thing, consider GasBuddy, a mobile app that helps users track down the cheapest gas in their region. Users can tap into their GPS location through their phone, or search by address or zip code to find the nearby gas prices.

As many of the prices are based on user reports, GasBuddy rewards users with points for reporting and updating a station's prices, with points making you eligible for regular raffles of prizes like free gas.

Download GasBuddy: Android , iOS

14. Roadtrippers (Android, iOS: Free)

Another handy travel companion when you hit the road is the aptly named Roadtrippers, a trip planning and itinerary app that lets you plot your next road trip, and helps you discover destinations, attractions, and useful stops along the way. 

With Roadtrippers, you can share your route and schedule with friends and family. The app helps users find everything from diners and dives to hotels, restaurants, national parks, roadside attractions and other scenic points of interest. 

If doing that research on a small phone screen stresses you out, you can plan trips in the Roadtrippers web portal if you prefer, saving locations and stops into a trip plan which you can sync across multiple devices for easy reference.

Download Roadtrippers: Android , iOS

15. PackPoint (Android, iOS: Free)

PackPoint is a travel packing wizard that provides a checklist of travel essentials that you'll need to pack, depending on the nature of your trip. 

Simply create a trip profile with your destination, length of stay and purpose of travel. PackPoint then creates a customized packing and luggage checklist that takes into account whether you're traveling for business or pleasure, the type and amount of clothing to pack based on the weather forecast and other factors. 

The app also comes with a variety of premium features, such as TripIt integration for automatic packing list creation.

Download PackPoint: Android , iOS

16. TripAdvisor (Android, iOS: Free)

TripAdvisor is your crowd-sourced guide to hotels, restaurants and attractions worldwide. The app allows you to browse through plenty of reviews, images and videos featuring various establishments worldwide to get a better idea of what awaits you at your destination. 

You can also access contact details; search for nearby establishments; explore restaurants by food type, price range or rating; check out air fares; and even add to the knowledge base by posting your own reviews, images and entries for the places you visit. There are even some handy "Near Me Now" features to alert you of nearby points of interest once you're on the scene.

Download TripAdvisor: Android , iOS

17. Airbnb (Android, iOS: Free)

Airbnb is a marketplace app that allows users to search for and find unique accommodations across the world, from mom-and-pop B&Bs for a night, to a small apartment for a week, or even a castle for a month. There's no shortage of quirky and unique establishments. Airbnb covers a range of prices in more than 34,000 cities across almost 200 countries, which means the adventurous or flexible traveler has some interesting choices for accommodations on their next trip.

Download Airbnb: Android , iOS

18. Vrbo (Android, iOS: Free)

Vrbo's mobile app is another option for finding places to stay on your next trip. At Vrbo, the emphasis is on vacation rentals, and with 2 million unique places to stay in 190-plus countries, you've got plenty of options. 

Use the Vrbo app to search for vacation homes, plan your trip and book your lodging. The app also gives you access to key booking details — what is the Wi-Fi password at your rental property, anyway? — and lets you share your itinerary with friends and family.

Download Vrbo: Android , iOS

19. Hotel Tonight (Android, iOS: Free)

If you unexpectedly need to look for last minute hotel rooms, check out  HotelTonight. It offers last-minute discounts on vacancies and same-night accommodations from top-rated hotels. Users can search by category and quality such as Basic, Hip or Luxe; view information on nearby hotels; and quickly book accommodations from within the app.

Download HotelTonight: Android , iOS

20. GlobeTips (iOS: Free)

How much should you tip? GlobeTips is a handy app that can tell you how much gratuity is customary wherever you are in the world. In addition to global tipping guides, GlobeTips includes a calculator for automatically calculating the tip, splitting the bill, and handling sales tax.

Download GlobeTips: iOS

• Best iPhone apps

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16 Travel Apps That Travel Editors Actually Use

Afar editors hand-picked these apps to make traveling easier at every step of your trip, from outlining a packing list and booking hotels to figuring out exchange rates and translating words..

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These must-have apps for iOS and Android make it easier to organize your travel plans, whether you need to book flights and hotel rooms or translate words from a different language.

Courtesy of Good Studio / Shutterstock

Most seasoned travelers develop their own techniques for planning and orchestrating trips that go smoothly. But even for people who travel frequently, parts of taking a trip can still be complicated. Afar editors and contributors are certainly no strangers to travel tasks like booking flights and hotels; renting cars for road trips ; or navigating public transportation and language barriers in unfamiliar cities. Whether you’re trying to stay calm during a turbulent flight or need assistance converting currency rates, our editors swear by these essential travel apps.

1. PackPoint

(iOS, Free | Android, Free ) “PackPoint does a great job at simplifying the art of how to pack a suitcase . I love this app because it personalizes your packing list depending on where you’re going and the activities you have planned. All you have to do is download the app, plug in the destination, and input information about your upcoming travels such as duration and time of year. Then, PackPoint provides you with trip-specific packing recommendations based on the weather in your destination and the activities you have planned. The app even takes more nuanced details into account, such as whether you’ll have access to laundry facilities where you’re going and have the ability to wash and rewear your clothes. Even though I’m a pretty organized person, I keep turning back to this super helpful packing app to help me channel my inner Marie Kondo .” —Sarah Buder, Afar contributor

(iOS, Free | Android, Free )

“I’ve been using this app for several years and it’s my absolute favorite. TripIt automatically tracks your confirmation emails for flight itineraries, hotel or Airbnb bookings, car rentals, restaurant reservations, and even any event tickets you might buy, then populates those travel plans into a little itinerary that you can view in one place. The easy-to-use organizational app makes it simple to share the consolidated information with family or friends, so you can send them your itinerary directly and avoid having to answer repeated texts like, “When are you landing again?” to coordinate an airport pickup. TripIt even features a personalized Travel Stats page for really data-hungry folks who want to know how many trips they’ve taken or countries they’ve visited—and that’s just in the free version! The pro version costs $49 per year and includes extras like real-time flight alerts, TSA wait times, and loyalty reward program updates.” —Sara Button, Afar contributor

“I love this language learning app; I use it all the time to prepare for international trips. Drops gamifies the educational experience, using flashcard-like mnemonic matching exercises, or memory devices, to teach vocabulary words. It works much better for my learning style than other language programs that focus on grammatical structure. If I’m going to an unfamiliar country for a short trip, I don’t worry about speaking the language perfectly, I just want to remember important words and phrases quickly. Drops offers more than 50 languages, including Ainu, the language spoken by an Indigenous Japanese culture that lives in Hokkaido.” —Maggie Fuller, Afar contributor

4. Rome2Rio

“Rome2Rio is a handy tool for getting from Point A to Point B. If you put in your starting point and destination, it’ll show you all the ways you could feasibly get there (plane, car, bus, and train), how long each option would take, and how much it would cost. If it’s a public transportation route, it’ll share the specific buses and trains you need to get on (as well as alternatives, should you miss them) and bring you to the appropriate booking websites. Having all the options laid out makes it easy to make an informed decision.” — Bailey Berg, Afar contributor

5. Mobile Passport

“I learned about Mobile Passport from Afar’s marketing director Katie Galeotti, who said she sometimes gets through U.S. Customs and Border Protection even faster than her husband, who has Global Entry . I decided to try it out the next time I returned from a trip abroad. Before going through customs at San Francisco International Airport (SFO), I downloaded the free app, filled out my declaration forms and passport information, then submitted the mobile documents for inspection and approval. Lo and behold, I was able to move through separate, faster customs lines at SFO in about five minutes just by showing my encrypted receipt. Since I really hate waiting around airports ( even for checked luggage ), I can’t say how satisfying it was to breeze out of SFO after a long international flight.” —Sara Button

6. Priority Pass

“Several premium credit cards such as the Chase Sapphire Reserve Card and the American Express Platinum Card offer Priority Pass memberships to card holders, which grant access to more than 1,500 airport lounges around the world. I have a Priority Pass membership through my credit card, which means I can duck into airport lounges even if I’m flying economy. The problem? I often lose track of my membership card, which is where the app comes in. Not only does it allow you to ‘save’ your card and present it on your phone, it also lets you search eligible lounges and discounts by airport, clueing you in to what amenities you can expect when you arrive.”— Katherine LaGrave, Afar deputy editor

7. Rain Rain

“If you’ve ever been 30,000 feet in the air, stuck ahead of a seat-kicker, and need to find your chill, then Rain Rain is for you. The free app on both iOS and Android has dozens of sounds, including nine variations of rain and real-life noise-tracks that cover everything from ‘Mississippi at Night’ to ‘Fish Tank.’ You can zen out to gentle wind chimes or an alarm clock ticking, and even create your own sound combinations, like ‘Car in the Rain’ layered on top of ‘Cicadas.’ There are no ads, and you can even set a time limit for the sounds to fade out. I’m already calmer just thinking about it.” —Katherine LaGrave

Mobile apps can help travelers understand public transportation options and also map out other routes, such as by bike.

8. Google Maps

“I use Google Maps all the time in my everyday life, and that certainly doesn’t change when I travel. The navigational app helps me find handy spots like banks or gas stations; understand public transportation options, including buses, trains, and ride-sharing services; map out walking and cycling routes; and keep track of restaurant reservations. It also allows me to easily share my location with travel buddies and create customized maps with flagged locations that I want to visit, which I can download for later use when I’m offline.”— Sara Button

9. Citymapper

“My fascination for public transportation borders on obsessive. I feel compelled to check out the buses and trains—and streetcars, ferries, trams, share bikes—in every city I visit. Citymapper, available for 104 international cities, feeds my compulsion. The app suggests routes and alternative routes in destinations from Copenhagen to Tokyo ; it shows maps, fares, and trip length with a breakdown of how much time will be spent on each mode of transportation per option. Notably, the travel app also maps out city routes for wheelchair accessibility . When my husband and I traveled to London with our teens, we discovered Citymapper’s ‘Share Your ETA’ feature. If the kids grew weary of a museum, they would type in the address of our flat, get their directions from the app, and then share their route with us. The feature let us watch their progress until they arrived safe and sound. They felt capable and independent; we felt secure and able to drink at the pub in peace.” —Ann Shields, Afar contributor

10. National Park Trail Guide

“This outdoor adventure app offers guides to 63 national parks, monuments, and recreation areas with need-to-know information on food, accommodation, and activities, as well as detailed trail and annual climate data. The mobile app is actually very useful when you’re in the park, but I personally like to use it in the early stages of planning for inspiration. Before a road trip or camping adventure , I’ll browse through a national park’s most beautiful features or best hikes to get excited about my trip.” —Maggie Fuller

11. AllTrails: Hike, Bike & Run

“AllTrails is an app that helps you find hikes within a given area, with information about the degree of difficulty, length, elevation gain, current conditions, and route type (loop or out-and-back). It also offers reviews and photos from people who have hiked it recently. AllTrails also has a (far superior) paid version, called AllTrails+ , that allows users to download maps for offline use, which is important in the backcountry. It also pushes alerts if you make a wrong turn and find trails by distance from you (as opposed to filtering through the myriad trails in the area yourself).” — Bailey Berg

Translation apps and currency converters can come in handy for travelers who don’t speak the local language in a given destination.

12. Google Translate

“I use Google Translate pretty much whenever I travel to countries where I don’t speak the local language . It’s so simple: All you have to do is enter a word, phrase, or sentence that you want to translate and then indicate the specific languages, such as Japanese to English, or Creole to Spanish. The app can translate meanings in 243 languages, and it lets you save them to your own personal phrasebook so you can remember them when you’re offline. It also offers camera translation in 37 languages, which only requires that you take a picture of a word in order to translate its meaning. Sure, Google’s language tool isn’t the only translation app out there, but it’s definitely the one I use most.”— Sarah Buder

13. HotelTonight

“HotelTonight lets you book last-minute hotel rooms at incredibly affordable rates in cities like New York City , Paris , and Barcelona . The app’s inventory is well vetted, with legitimately cool boutique hotels categorized by easy-to-use filters like basic, solid, hip, luxe. I became a HotelTonight devotee recently, during my second pregnancy. I was absolutely exhausted but I couldn’t nap at home because my toddler would come find me and, with her adorable gap-toothed grin, yell, ‘TIME TO GET UP, MOMMY!’ So I made a deal with my husband: If I could find a good hotel deal in Manhattan for under $150, I could book it day-of and sneak away for a few hours (or a night’s) sleep. I started pulling up HotelTonight daily—I was desperate—and filtered by neighborhoods I was in for meetings or ‘hip’ hotels like the Ace or Moxy that were half their normal price. The app makes staying at top hotels in traditionally pricey cities more of a bargain—though I bet HotelTonight’s founder never expected it to appeal to the secondary market of overtired moms. I booked the Ace and cherished every minute.” —Laura Dannen Redman, Afar editor at large

14. Xe Currency

“Math has never been my strongest subject, which makes doing currency conversions in my head essentially my travel kryptonite. It’s not the sexiest app out there, but Xe Currency converter is probably the app I use the most when I travel abroad. Before your trip, just add the currency of the country you’re traveling to into your list on the app. Then when you land, all you have to do is plug in the price you want to convert to U.S. dollars or otherwise, and the app will spit out a rate equivalent in mere seconds. It’s super easy to use on the fly while you’re shopping or at a restaurant. You can even use the app to view rate conversions when you’re offline, as long as you saved the relevant currency to the app while using Wi-Fi.” —Lyndsey Matthews, Afar contributor

15. Splitwise

“This app tracks shared expenses. If you’re traveling with friends on a group trip , it spares you the awkward conversations about whose credit card pays for dinner or who’s going to call the Lyft, and it prevents resentment that could arise from anyone paying more or less than their fair share. If you’re extra nerdy, like me and my friends, you can turn it into a game! You try to work it out so at the end of the trip everyone has wound up paying as close to the same amount as possible.” —Jeremy Saum, Afar contributor

16. HappyCow

(iOS, $5 | Android, Free )

“HappyCow is my must-have app for finding vegetarian/vegan restaurants when I travel—or frankly, when I’m at home too. It works like Google Maps for the meat-free set, pointing out all the options but not requiring me to guess how “vegetarian” a place really is. Instead, the map surfaces vegetarian and vegan spots (including regular restaurants that have good choices for non-meat eaters), lets you filter by specs like price and gluten-free, and includes write-ups with information on what kind of options you can expect, what the veggie burgers are made of, and even whether the place serves vegan beer. Entries also include key info like opening hours, payment options, and reviews. There’s a free version of the app that will show you what’s near you, but the full-access version is well worth the small price (currently $5). It lets you search internationally, save your favorites, join and interact with the community of veg travelers (nearly 1 million strong), and leave your own reviews.” —Billie Cohen, Afar executive editor

More travel app recommendations from Afar

→ The Most Helpful Translation Apps for Travelers → 6 Awesome Hiking Apps for Adventurous Travelers → Navigate the National Parks Better With These Essential Apps → Free Apps and Websites That Make Eco-Friendly Travel Easy

This article was originally published in 2019 and was most recently updated on July 10, 2024, with new information.

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22 Best Travel Apps Every Traveler Should Know About

From tracking flight delays, finding last-minute accommodations, and even locating the nearest public restroom, these are the most helpful travel apps to download before you travel.

Using the right travel apps can help you save both time and money , while making the journey much less stressful . Many of these apps also provide local recommendations and hidden gems tourists don't often get to see — and some are completely free.

Whether you're looking for an app that will give you discounts for popular local events, offer a last-minute booking at a fraction of the price, or help you breeze through the airport , these are the 22 best travel apps to download before your next trip.

Citymapper helps travelers find the speediest route to their destination, providing step-by-step instructions on where to find the nearest bus and train stations. You'll be able to see when the next arrivals are, and real-time routing means you'll get updates every minute. The app also has a chat feature that allows you to update friends and family on your E.T.A. wherever you are.

Available on iOS and Android .

PackPoint takes the hassle out of packing by creating a customized list of what you'll need for your getaway. Enter your destination, travel dates, length of stay, and activities that might require special gear, like hiking or swimming, and the app will create a custom packing list you can save for future use. Besides checking weather conditions for you, the app also allows users to share their packing lists with fellow travelers.

The beauty of Rebtel is you don't need an internet connection to call friends and family back home. The app connects to local phone lines to provide you with cheap calls in 51 countries around the world without having to deal with the hassle of getting a local SIM card or racking up your phone bill.

If you're looking to get outdoors, this app will provide you with the area's best hiking, biking, and running trails. In addition to details on length, starting location, and trail quality, AllTrails includes reviews and photos from a community of hikers and outdoor enthusiasts. You'll find useful information like what to pack, obstacles you'll find along the route, and the best scenic spots to check out.

If you find yourself in the middle of a long layover, Dayuse can get you into a hotel room for a few hours for up to 75 percent less than what the typical overnight rate would be. The app features 5,000 hotels in 23 countries, and allows you to make free cancellations at the last minute, in case you manage to catch an earlier flight.

Selections include everything from business hotels to wellness accommodations, with payments made directly when you arrive. You also get full use of the hotel's amenities for the duration of your stay.

The prices of flights can fluctuate, making it tricky to decide if you should book right away or hold off. That's where Hopper comes in, predicting the best time to find the cheapest fares, saving up to 40 percent. The app also has a price-monitoring feature so that you can select a particular flight and receive alerts if the price drops. Through Hopper, users can also compare the prices and amenities of more than 250 airlines and get alerts about airfare flash sales.

RV Parks & Campgrounds

This camping app helps you locate prime RV parks, campgrounds, rest areas, and gas stations across North America. With more than 40,000 facilities, the app sorts locations based on ratings and includes both privately-owned RV parks and public parks to choose from.

Nike Training Club

Hitting the gym while you're traveling can be tough, but with Nike Training Club, you'll feel like you have a personal trainer right in your pocket. That's because you can access hundreds of free workouts from Nike Master Trainers and celebrities like Kevin Hart, Serena Williams, and Cristiano Ronaldo. Audio and video clips help you make sure you're on top of your technique, while personalized training plans will keep you on track.

If you don't have much time to spare at the airport, Grab allows you to check out what food selections are near your gate, and gives you the option to pre-order your meal so you can pick it up on the way. The app currently operates at over 60 airports worldwide, giving you plenty of bites to choose from on your next trip.

GasBuddy is the app you'll want if you're taking a road trip. GasBuddy tracks down where to find the cheapest gas prices, allowing you to filter by price, location, brand, and amenities. It also provides you with deals at nearby convenience stores and price hike alerts so you can nail down the best prices every time.

This App Will Help You Actually Relax on Vacation

Want to know what local events are taking place at your destination? Headout will show you the top attractions, shows, tours, and experiences in popular cities like New York, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Orlando, Hawaii, Dubai, and more.

Activities range from catching a Broadway show, yoga in the hills, or taking a helicopter tour, with exclusive last-minute offers that can be up to 80 percent off.

If you need to access the internet during your travels, chances are you'll have to connect to public Wi-Fi, which can be sketchy. TunnelBear allows you to connect privately and securely by providing you a VPN (virtual private network) that will encrypt your browsing data to keep your information hidden from hackers and advertisers. The app comes with 500MB of free browsing data each month, or you can opt for unlimited data at a low monthly rate.

Hostelworld

Hostelworld is where you'll find more than 17,000 hostels, hotels, B&B's, and communal spaces in 178 countries. The app is great for solo travelers looking to meet fellow vacationers during their trip, including a Noticeboard that highlights events and meetups, and a translator that will help you communicate in up to 43 languages.

WeatherBug provides forecasts for millions of locations around the world, with current, hourly, and even 10-day options. The app also has specific weather maps to track everything from lightning and wind to pressure and humidity, and makes staying on top of changes to the weather easy with instant alerts.

Eatwith allows you to dine with locals, in their homes, all over the world. Menus are posted for you to see, while hosts will typically list what they cook, the languages they speak, and any alcohol pairings they'll be serving. Not only does the app give you a chance to meet locals and get superb dining recommendations, but it also allows you to enjoy a high-quality meal for less than what you'd typically pay at a restaurant.

Available on iOS and Android.

Trying to locate a public restroom can be tricky, especially in a new destination. That's where Flush comes in. The app has a database of more than 200,000 toilets, and quickly provides travelers with nearby bathrooms. You can search without an internet connection, and the app will also notify you if a restroom requires a fee.

While banks may charge you a fee for transferring money abroad, Wise allows you to make a transfer based on real-time currency exchanges, so you can send money at rates the company says are up to eight times cheaper than what you'd find at traditional banks.

TripIt makes it easy to put together a cohesive travel itinerary. Simply forward your confirmation emails, like your hotel and flight reservations, or your rental car reservation, and TripIt will build a full itinerary to help you stay organized with all of your plans.

With real-time alerts, you'll know if your flight is delayed or canceled, while the flight finder can help you book a new option should a cancellation occur.

Another good app for the road, Waze gives you community-based data about traffic jams, and information to locate points of interest like the cheapest gas stations and the fastest routes to your destination. Live maps include voice-guided navigation to easily guide you.

Xe provides live exchange rates and charts to keep you on top of money matters during your travels, easily allowing you to choose between different currencies you'd like to convert. It also has a rate alert so that you can monitor your favorite currencies — and it can be used offline.

Timeshifter

If you're sick of the jet lag battle that inevitably comes with travel, check out Timeshifter , an app that helps you to avoid jet lag long before your flight departs. Thanks to neuroscience research on circadian rhythms and sleep, the app provides personalized recommendations that take into account your age, gender, typical sleep patterns, and specifics about your trip. The app will tell you when you should avoid or seek daylight, and when you should stay awake or take a nap. The result? A gentle jet lag experience, which translates to more time exploring your destination.

FlightAware

If you have a tight connection or are picking up friends or family from the airport, look to FlightAware for help. The app tracks flights in real time, so you can see exactly where the aircraft is at any given moment. In addition to providing arrivals and delays, you can also see if weather will have any affect on certain locations.

Evie Carrick is a writer and editor who’s lived in five countries and visited well over 50. She now splits her time between Colorado and Paris, ensuring she doesn't have to live without skiing or L'As du Fallafel.

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15 Travel Apps That Save You Time And Money

Using the best travel apps help you save both time and money. They also reduce travel stress. And who doesn’t want that?

Whether your questions are about how to navigate through an airport or you’re wanting to explore off-the-beaten-path destinations, these 15 best travel apps are essential downloads before your next trip.

Pro tip: Staying healthy is key to enjoying your travels. Here’s my SECRET, and I’ve even got a 10% discount for my readers!

15 Best Travel Apps

1. Maps.me: This app says it’s not just an app but a friend in all your adventures. Once you start using it, you’ll see why.

This app allows you to download detailed maps of countries, regions, and cities for offline use. The app’s bookmarking feature allows you to save favorite locations and plan routes in advance.

Its search functionality helps you discover nearby points of interest. Maps.me lets you contribute to its open-source map data, allowing you to update and improve maps for fellow travelers. Cool, right?

2. WiFi Map: Need free WiFi hotspots? With WiFi Map you get internet access wherever you travel! They provide access to over 150M+ hotspots worldwide as well as eSIM service.

Staying connected while you’re traveling is important, right? WiFi Map is the world’s largest Wi-Fi community providing access to millions of free Wi-Fi hotspots around the world. WiFi Map’s speed test feature lets you check the quality of available networks. This feature equates to a smooth and reliable browsing experience without racking up expensive data charges.

Download the WiFI Map app.

3. Flush: Another app you didn’t know you needed but won’t be able to live without is Flush – the go-to app for travelers in need of a restroom break. Flush is the quickest, simplest way of finding a public bathroom or restroom. Open the app and it will displays the nearest toilets to your location.

It has a user-friendly interface and comprehensive database. With features such as user reviews, accessibility information, and real-time availability updates, Flush takes the guesswork out of finding clean and convenient restrooms.

Download the Flush app.

• Do you find it difficult to book award flights with your miles and points? I do! That’s why I turn to Point.me. They get me great deals and save me money and time.

Travel Apps

4. Trainline (Europe): If you prefer to travel by train in Europe, Trainline is your one-stop shop for booking tickets and planning your rail journeys. It also provides information on bus tickets.

The app’s “Price Prediction” feature helps you find the best fares by predicting price fluctuations. Its “Live Departure Boards” provide real-time updates on train schedules and platform information. Also, Trainline offers mobile tickets for paperless travel and alerts for disruptions or delays.

Download the Trainline app.

5. Citymapper: This app is useful for navigating major cities around the world.

Citymapper offers detailed public transportation routes, including buses, trains, and metros. The app’s “Rain Safe” feature provides alternative routes to avoid getting caught in the rain. Its “Cycle Hire” integration lets you easily find and rent bikes for eco-friendly travel.

Citymapper offers real-time updates on transit disruptions, crowdedness predictions for public transport, and even calorie-burning estimates for walking or cycling routes. This last feature is creative!

Download the Citymapper app.

Pro Tip: Do you Pruvo all your hotels stays? If not, do what I do and let Pruvo monitor your reservations for price drops. It’s free and it’s the easiest way to save money on all your hotel rooms.

Miscellaneous Apps

6. Timeshifter: Sometimes it seems there are as many jet lag solutions as there are travelers! It also seems like NO jet lag solution ever works. As Timeshifter says, “Travel is part of your life. Jet lag doesn’t need to be.”

However, Timeshifter goes beyond traditional jet lag solutions with its personalized approach to travel fatigue. Using sleep and circadian neuroscience, it crafts customised jet lag plans tailored to your sleep patterns, itinerary, and preferences.

The app’s innovative features include light exposure schedules, caffeine intake recommendations, and sleep optimization techniques. These are all designed to help you adapt to new time zones quickly and efficiently.

With Timeshifter, you can conquer jet lag and arrive at your destination feeling refreshed and ready to explore.

Download the Timeshifter app

***Here’s a useful read for more Tips on Conquering Jet Lag and arriving at your destination feeling refreshed and ready to explore.

7. GasBuddy: Who wants to spend more on gas than they need to? Nobody, right? That’s where GasBuddy come in.

GasBuddy helps you find the cheapest gas prices along your route. It also offers unique features like a gas price heat map, price prediction, and gas station amenity filters. You can set up price alerts, use the trip cost calculator, and more.

Available throughout the United States and Canada, GasBuddy ensures you never overpay for gas again, making it an essential tool for every road trip and daily commute.

Download the GasBuddy app.

8. Google Translate: Google Translate offers more than just basic translation services; it’s packed with quirky features to enhance your language learning and communication experience. The app’s “Word Lens” feature allows you to translate text using your phone’s camera. This comes in handy for deciphering signs, menus, and other printed text in foreign languages.

The “Conversation Mode” allows bilingual conversations by speaking into your device, which then translates and speaks the text in the desired language. With offline translation capabilities and support for over 100 languages, Google Translate is an indispensable companion for breaking down language barriers when you are out there exploring the world.

Planning Apps

9. TripIt: Do you enjoy keeping all your travel plans organized and in one place? Then you’re likely already a fan of TripIt. TripIt is the ultimate travel itinerary app.

It’s simple to use. Just forward your confirmation emails for flights, hotels, car rentals, and activities to TripIt, and it automatically creates a master itinerary for your trip. Your master itinerary is complete with reservation details, maps, and important reminders.

For many, this ensures a stress-free and well-planned travel experience.

10. Skyscanner: Skyscanner offers more than just flight comparisons. It has many unique features to enhance your travel planing. Skyscanner offers an “Everywhere” search to discover cheapest destinations.

It offers “Price Alerts” to notify you of flight price drops. It also has a “Flexible Dates” option for finding the best fares, catering to budget-conscious travelers with flexible schedules.

For more tips and tricks on booking competitive and hassle-free flights, our team is ready to assist!

11. Culture Trip: For many, Culture Trip is a go-to app for discovering the best of local culture, food, and worldwide experiences. With curated content and personalized recommendations, it offers articles, videos, and guides. From off-the-beaten-path attractions to top restaurants, Culture Trip helps you explore your destination.

Download the Culture Trip app.

Accommodation Apps

12. Hostelworld: Looking for budget-friendly accommodations around the world? Try Hostelworld. Hostelworld offers a wide range of hostels, guesthouses, and budget hotels that cater to every traveler’s needs and preferences.

One fun feature is the app’s “Hostel Noticeboard” feature. It allows you to connect with fellow travelers, share tips, and join events.

Download the Hostelworld app.

Planning your next trip? Read more to save money and time and book your stay hassle-free!

13. XE: Stay updated on currency exchange rates and manage your finances with XE. It’s a global currency converter app. Whether you’re budgeting for your trip or conducting international money transfers, XE provides real-time exchange rate updates.

XE’s “Currency Alerts” feature keeps you informed when your desired currency hits your preferred exchange rate. This helps you make informed financial decisions on the go.

14. Revolut: Simplify your finances while traveling with Revolut, a digital banking app that offers multi-currency accounts, international money transfers, and fee-free spending overseas. Revolut offers competitive exchange rates. This helps you manage your money abroad and avoid unnecessary fees during your travels.

15. Splitwise: Splitwise can serve as your solution for managing shared expenses among friends, family, or roommates. Whether you’re splitting dinners out, rentals, flights, or tracking group purchases, Splitwise makes it easy to keep track of who owes what.

Plus, their useful features like receipt digitization and automatic expense calculations, offer transparency and fairness in all your financial transactions.

Download the Splitwise app.

Final Thoughts On The Best Travel Apps

While this list isn’t exhaustive, it’s certainly a great place to start or even expand your best travel apps repertoire. Which apps do you recommend that weren’t on the list? Let us know so we can share even more useful apps with readers.

Related  Articles:

• My Favorite Travel Resources and Products
• I Always Get the Lowest Prices on Hotel Rooms: Here’s How!
• Staying healthy is key to enjoying your travels. Here’s my SECRET, and I’ve even got a 10% discount for my readers!
• 9 Awesome Travel Accessories To Pack for Your Next Trip
• Why use just any credit card when you can use one that earns miles and points? Don’t miss out on the BEST current travel credit card offers!
• What if you could learn everything you need to know about your destination in just 15 minutes? Here’s how!

The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.

Shelli Stein

Shelli Stein is a travel writer, personal development coach , and story teller. She has come to realize writing as a way of sharing travel experiences brings her a lot of pleasure! Her areas of expertise are: all things  Southwest Airlines ,  hotel reviews , and what to do, see, and eat in destinations around the world. She sees travel as an adventure, trying to somehow get inside and experience a different way of life, a different cultural heritage. Maybe she can  show you something  you’ve never seen.  Inspire you with new ideas  for your next vacation. Attempt to  put a smile on your face . Help you learn from her mistakes . Or challenge your  assumptions about the world . She lives life with humor, gratitude, and humility and always sees the coffee cup as half full!

Lost In Translation: Hand Gestures Gone Wrong

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10 Best Travel Apps on iOS COVID is over, vacations are in, and travel apps are more popular than ever.

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According to Statista , the revenue from travel apps will increase by 64% by 2027. But even without the numbers, every traveler can feel it in the air — the urge to use these tools is irresistible. Together with the team from Zoftify , we have prepared a list of the best travel apps for this season that go beyond just booking flights and hotels.

Timeshifter

Timeshifter is an innovative app designed to minimize the effects of jet lag. Users can input their usual sleep patterns, flight details, and desired adjustment speed to the new time zone, and the app responds with a customized plan covering when to be exposed to light, sleep, eat, and avoid screen time. 

The Timeshifter app is ideal for frequent travelers or those embarking on long-haul flights. Adhering to these plans can help adjust your body clock before travel, and reduce jet lag once you arrive. By preparing in advance and making small lifestyle changes as directed in the app, you can feel rested and productive at your destination right away.

PackPoint is a free travel packing list organizer. This app tells you what to put in your luggage based on your destination and trip duration. You select the destination and the travel dates, and it constructs a tailor-made packing list, including clothes, toiletries, chargers, and other important stuff.

A packing list, together with a “Must Haves” checklist, will ensure that you don’t leave behind your important identification, tickets, gadgets, and chargers. It will also estimate the baggage—its size and count—that the things on your list will fill up.

Steven is a no-cost app designed for managing shared expenses and splitting bills among friends and groups. It allows users to create groups for dividing costs like meals, rent, and groceries. Each group member can contribute to a collective balance, and expenses can be split equally or according to specific shares.

The app makes sure all payments are tracked and balanced correctly, simplifying the process of managing shared financial obligations. With its straightforward interface, Steven is an effective tool for ensuring everyone pays their fair share without the need for manual calculations or following up on debts.

Flexiroam is an iOS app that provides international data coverage through the use of eSIM technology. eSIM is a non-physical, embedded SIM right in your smartphone. With this technology, Flexiroam offers its services in over 200 countries on a variety of cellular networks.

Flexiroam has different data plans, and you can buy extra data if you need it. Coverage is on 4G/5G networks if available, bringing you high-speed internet access during travel. The app allows users to monitor their data usage in real time, which helps in avoiding unwanted fees. Flexiroam strives to offer reliable and cost-effective international data coverage, aiming to simplify staying connected while traveling.

Pruvo tracks your existing hotel reservations with free cancellations. If the hotel drops its price post-booking, the app rebooks you at a lower price. It can also suggest other cheaper hotels if there’s a significant drop in prices. For the budget traveler or deal hunter, Pruvo will save hours searching through endless websites for the best deals on hotels. 

There are more than 200,000 hotels worldwide on Pruvo, including the most prominent chains like Marriott and Hilton. According to Pruvo, its users saved up to 60% on hotel costs for its users. The application is free — Pruvo makes money only through commissions from these hotels, so no other fee will be charged.

Wanderlog is a useful travel app for planning and logging your trips. The app provides an intuitive interface to build customized itineraries by adding locations you want to visit. You can save places like museums, restaurants, hotels, and activities to your itinerary and Wanderlog will organize them on a map and timeline for you. 

The app allows you to discover new locations along your route based on your interests. You can also get recommendations for the best things to see and do in each city from local experts and other travelers. Wanderlog makes it easy to keep all your travel plans, bookmarks, photos, and memories in one place so you have a comprehensive diary of your adventures.

Flio is a travel application focused on providing up-to-date information about your flights. It delivers live updates on flight statuses, including delays, gate changes, and baggage details. Additionally, the app offers essential airport information like gate locations and amenities.

If you face any issues with baggage, Flio’s customer service is available around the clock in multiple languages to assist within 48 hours or offer a refund. Flio aims to reduce the typical stresses of air travel, so you can focus more on enjoying your trip.

The Flush app offers a straightforward yet functional approach to finding restrooms in your area. With a database of over 200,000 restrooms, it employs your device’s GPS to display nearby facilities and delivers specifics such as operational hours, available amenities, and user reviews.

Particularly useful for road trips or when visiting unfamiliar locations, Flush becomes an essential tool if you have a medical condition or are just a bit nervous. The app supports offline functionality, enabling you to download information about restrooms at your destination beforehand, which helps avoid excessive data charges abroad. With its crowd-sourced content and live updates on the cleanliness and availability of facilities, Flush ensures you have reliable restroom options when nature calls.

WiFi Map is designed to help you find available public WiFi spots worldwide. This application comes with crowd-based mapping for free internet access points in more than 100 countries, counting over 150 million hotspots.

Within the app, users can search for networks by applying filters such as connection speed, encryption type, and venue location. Before you connect, it’s possible to browse through recent user comments that detail the network’s quality and reliability. After using the network, you also have the chance to leave your own rating and comments, helping future users make informed decisions. Additionally, the app provides the functionality to bookmark your favorite hotspots, making them more readily accessible for subsequent visits.

Stasher offers a service that is useful for securely storing your belongings while traveling. The app links you with an array of local businesses, like hotels, cafes, and shops, that provide luggage storage options either hourly or daily. You just need to pick a “StashPoint” on the app, leave your luggage there, and then go about your day until it’s time to collect your items.

No need to lug heavy bags around or make unnecessary trips back to your accommodation for your belongings. The network of Stasher includes over 1,500 locations spread across 100 cities globally, with different prices and durations. Whether you plan ahead or decide last minute, the app makes it straightforward and economical to handle your luggage when you’re in unfamiliar locations.

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The 19 Best Travel Planning Apps for Every Type of Traveler

December 1, 2021 15 min read

Planning your next travel adventure can be both exciting and stressful. While searching for amazing destinations and attractions to visit is always fun, keeping track of all of the information relating to your trip isn’t the easiest task. 

If you’ve been using Google docs and sheets or simply storing travel inspiration, confirmations, bookings, and reservations in your email, there’s a better way: using a travel planning app! 

You can discover an array of travel itinerary apps on the market, such as Wanderlog , a free and easy-to-use travel itinerary planner. But deciding which is best for your needs can be challenging. To help, we’ve put together this list of the 19 best travel planner apps on the market. 

To create this guide, we started by searching for the top trip planners online and in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. We then tested these apps and looked at user reviews to create this ultimate list of the best travel planning apps. This extensive list includes a range of apps, from road trip planning apps to itinerary planning apps. No matter what type of traveler you are, we have you covered. 

If you’re looking for a way to simplify travel planning and organization, keep reading! 

Best Overall Travel Planner App: Wanderlog 

We truly believe that Wanderlog is the best overall travel itinerary planning app on the market. Wanderlog allows you to plan detailed day-by-day itineraries, import all of your trip information, and search activity suggestions. It’s also perfect for group travelers and those traveling via a range of transport methods, from flying to taking a road trip. 

You can use Wanderlog in-browser, or download the app for iOS and Android. Wanderlog is 100% free to use, and this free version offers access to almost all of the apps’ features. There is an upgrade option, Wanderlog Pro, that offers added benefits with a one-week free trial.

Wanderlog Features

Activity Suggestions and Access to Pre-Created Trips 

You can search third-party websites and add things to do to your itinerary from online guides, like Tripadvisor or Google Trips. Wanderlog also offers activity suggestions, and you can view trips created by other users for inspiration. 

Storage and Organization of Travel Information 

When using Wanderlog, you can manually add travel information or automatically import reservations, bookings, and other email confirmations by syncing with Gmail. This travel information includes flight info, bus or train reservations,  accommodation details, rental car confirmations, and more. You can also add expenses for places and items on your itinerary, and manage your total budget.

Itinerary Creation 

As you upload travel information and add activities you want to undertake on your trip, a day-by-day itinerary will be created. This itinerary is incredibly easy to edit, and you can add notes to each stop. 

If you don’t need a day-by-day itinerary and want more flexibility in your plans, you can simply create lists, for example, a list of things to do or restaurants to try. 

Access to Maps 

When you add stops to your itinerary or lists, they’ll be displayed on a map. The map feature makes it easy to see where all the attractions you wish to visit are located, allowing you to plan the most efficient itinerary. 

Road Trip Planning

Wanderlog now offers the ability to plan road trips! You can add start and end destinations, plus unlimited stops along the way, and your road trip route will be shown on interactive maps. 

It’s super easy to rearrange these plans, and you can even use our “Road Trip Optimizer” to generate the most efficient route. The total time and distance of your road trip journey will be displayed too.  

Group Collaboration 

Wanderlog makes collaborating with others in your travel group a breeze! You can easily collaborate with others traveling with you by simply adding their email to your trip. Alternatively, you can just share a link to the itinerary. Having done this, all members of your group can collaborate on the plans in real-time. 

Wanderlog Pro Added Features

• Offline access to itineraries and maps
• Exporting of maps to Google Maps
• Auto scanning of travel confirmations in Gmail
• Road trip route optimization  

Who Is Wanderlog For? 

Wanderlog is the best app to plan travel for every type of traveler. From solo travelers to groups, and from the highly organized traveler to those that simply need one place to store information and activity suggestions. Wanderlog also has a highly user-friendly interface, and best of all, it’s free to use! 

Who Is Wanderlog Not For? 

Wanderlog is great for all travelers! Whether you want to organize your travel details, search for an array of activities to enjoy on your trip, or collaborate with fellow travelers, the Wanderlog travel planning app won’t disappoint. 

Does Wanderlog sound like the travel itinerary planner for you? Download the app today ! 

Best Road Trip Planning App: Roadtrippers

If you’re looking for road trip planner apps, Roadtrippers is one of the best options out there! This app is created exclusively for those traveling via car. It not only maps out the best routes for you to follow but also offers suggestions of things to do along the way. 

Roadtrippers can be used online and via their iPhone and Android app. Roadtrippers offers a free Basic version and a paid-for version called RoadTrippers Plus, which costs $29.99 per year.  

Roadtrippers Features

Custom Route Maps

Roadtrippers calculate the best route for you. Simply enter your road trip start and end destination, plus stops along the way if applicable. You can choose the fastest route or ask Roadtrippers to suggest additional stops along the way. 

Activity and Attraction Suggestions 

As just mentioned, Roadtrippers offers suggestions on things to do along your road trip route. These suggestions include activities to try and attractions to visit, as well as dining and accommodation suggestions. 

Gas Cost Estimations 

Once you have a route mapped, Roadtrippers provides an estimation of the total gas cost. This feature is great for those operating on a budget. 

Navigation 

Roadtrippers also help guide you once you set out on the trip with in-app navigation. This feature allows you to stay within the app instead of switching to another navigation app, like Google Maps. 

Roadtrippers Plus Added Features 

• Offline maps
• Collaboration features, allowing multiple travelers to add to the road trip itinerary 
• Live traffic updates 
• Special promotions from Roadtrippers’ travel panthers, such as discounts on hotels 
• Dark mode 
• No in-app ads 

Who Is Roadtrippers For? 

As the name suggests, Roadtrippers is ideal for people planning road trips. The app is helpful for all types of road trip travelers, from those looking for a quick route from A to B to those wanting to visit an array of attractions along a multi-city route. 

Who Is RoadTrippers Not For? 

This app isn’t optimal for those planning different types of travel experiences. For example, if you’ll fly to one city and then want recommendations for tourist attractions, this isn’t the right app for you. You also miss out on features without a paid account, so if you want to benefit from all of a travel apps’ features for free, you may not be interested in RoadTrippers. 

Want to learn more about Roadtrippers? Read our in-depth Roadtrippers review ! 

Best Travel Planning App for Trip Information Organization: TripIt

TripIt is one of the relatively well-known itinerary planning apps that stores all your trip details, like transport and accommodation information, in one place. TripIt can be used via web browser or an app for iOS or Android. 

TripIt has both a free version of the app, with limited features, and a paid-for version called TripIt Pro. You can also purchase TripIt for Teams which is targeted at business travelers.

TripIt Pro: $49 per year with a 30-day free trial

TripIt Teams: Starts at $29 a month for one to ten users 

TripIt Features

TripIt allows you to upload your travel information to one place. Things you can upload include flight details, hotel bookings, and activity reservations. You can manually upload information or email it to TripIt. 

TripIt Pro Added Features 

• Transport fare trackers
• Check-in reminders
• Flight updates
• Seat upgrade information 
• Airport security wait time updates 
• Loyalty/rewards program points tracker 
• Baggage claim location notification 
• Interactive maps
• Ability to share plans with others 
• Features to add documents to your itinerary, such as photos or PDFs 

Who Is TripIt For? 

This is a great app for those that only want to store and organize all the information they already have relating to a trip in one place, and have access to this information on their phone. It’s also very easy to use. 

Those that also want notifications related to their trip all in one place will appreciate the features offered by TripIt Pro. 

Who Is TripIt Not For? 

TripIt is quite a basic itinerary planner. In addition, TripIt doesn’t offer suggestions on things to do in the city you’re visiting. These drawbacks mean that TripIt is best for those that only want to store all of their travel information in one place.

If you’re looking for an app that offers travel suggestions, such as activities to try or landmarks to visit, this isn’t the app for you. Travelers looking for a free travel itinerary app will probably not be interested in TripIt either (you should instead try Wanderlog that’s 100% free to use!) 

Unsure if TripIt is right for you? Read our detailed TripIt review to learn more about the app.

Best Travel Planning App for Documenting Your Trip: Polarsteps

Polarsteps allows you to document your entire trip, along with creating itineraries. This travel app can be used in-browser or via an app and is one of the best free travel planner apps, as you can access all features at no cost. You can pay for a printed travel book with pictures and notes relating to your trip. These books start at approximately $40 for a 24-page book.

Polarsteps Features

Trip Itinerary Creation 

You can create a trip itinerary and add as many stops as you like. These stops include different cities, countries, and landmarks/places of interest. A map showing each stop will also be generated. 

Addition of Images, Videos, and Notes 

For every stop added, you can also upload pictures, videos, and a description of the place. This feature is ideal for those looking to document their adventure and makes Polarsteps somewhat of a digital travel scrapbook. 

Access to Pre-Created Trips

You can follow other users (as you would on social media networks) and access their pre-created trips. This is the one discovery feature on the app to help you find additional places to visit. 

Sharing Features 

It’s easy to share trips with other people, like friends and family. You can add followers to your trip, which allows them to see everything you’re doing. Multiple people, however, can not edit and add to a trip from different accounts. 

Who Is Polarsteps For? 

Polarsteps is recommended for those that want to document their entire trip with images, notes, and the like. It’s also perfect for those taking long, multi-city trips, although can be used by those taking shorter trips too. 

Who Is Polarsteps Not For? 

This app isn’t recommended for those looking to create an itinerary that simply keeps all of their travel information in one place. If you don’t want to document your trip via images, notes, and videos, Polarsteps probably won’t be worth using. 

The app also isn’t great for those looking for activity suggestions, you can access the trips of others for ideas, but the Polarsteps will not offer streamlined activity suggestions itself. 

Read our detailed Polarsteps review to discover more about this app. 

Best Alternative to Print Travel Guides: Lonely Planet Guides

Lonely Planet is an extremely well-known travel guide brand. Recently, they launched an app, Lonely Planet Guides, that is quickly becoming one of the  best travel planner apps. Lonely Planet Guides offers attractions and landmark suggestions for over 1,000 cities. You can also access videos, curated collections, and phrasebooks. 

Lonely Planet Guides is accessible via an app for iOS and Android. There is a free version, but it’s very basic, so paying for a subscription is necessary in most cases. Lonely Planet Guides pricing is as follows: 

• One Month: $4.99
• Six Months: $21.99 (or $3.67 a month)
• One Year: $39.99 (or $3.33 a month) 

Lonely Planet Guides Features

Information on Places of Interest 

You have access to information on landmarks and attractions for the majority of cities on the app. This feature is great for discovery and allows you to find the best things to see and do in the city you’re visiting.

If you don’t have a paid subscription, you can only access info on four places of interest per month. 

Custom Maps and Bucket Lists 

If you discover places of interest that you want to visit, you can add them to a map and/or bucket list. Once in the city, you can open your map to easily see where all the attractions you want to visit are located. 

Without a paid plan, you can only add four locations to your map each month. 

Curated Collections

Access to pre-created collections of things to do is available. These are often categorized, for example, the best markets or restaurants to visit. 

Ability to Purchase Tours and Other Tickets 

If you discover an attraction you want to visit or a tour you want to try, you can purchase tickets via a third party directly in the app. 

Paid Subscription Added Features 

• Access to phrasebooks for 19 languages 
• 360-degree immersive experiences 

Who Is Lonely Planet Guides For? 

The Lonely Planet Guides app is ideal for those looking for a digital alternative to traditional print travel guidebooks. It’s also a good choice for those going on a multi-city trip as you have access to information for thousands of cities across the globe, all from your phone. 

Who Is Lonely Planet Guides Not For? 

Lonely Planet Guides isn’t recommended for travelers that are looking for free travel planner apps. It’s also not the best option for those looking to create complete itineraries that include transport and accommodation information as well as places they plan to visit. 

Get all the details on this travel planner app by reading our Lonely Planet Guides review . 

Best Travel Planning App for Those That Want to Explore Like a Local: ViaHero

ViaHero is a travel planning app with a difference. Instead of planning your itinerary yourself, locals to the area (called “Heroes”) will create an itinerary and personalized guidebook for you. Understandably, this comes at a cost. You’ll be charged $40 per day of itinerary planning, with the maximum paid for a guidebook usually being $125. 

Destinations covered include cities in North America, Central and South America, Asia, and Europe. 

ViaHero Features

Custom Guidebook Creation  

After highlighting the types of activities and attractions you’re interested in, your “Hero” will create an itinerary and guidebook. 

A Personalized Map

You’ll also get access to a custom map that features each location mentioned in your guidebook. 

Booking of Activities and Other Travel Arrangements 

If things on your itinerary need booking (and booking doesn’t require prepayment) your local “hero” will make these arrangements for you. 

Ability to Communicate with Your “Hero”  

You can get in touch with your local “hero” at any point before and during your trip. This feature allows you to request changes to your itinerary and ask questions if needed as you explore the city.  

Who Is ViaHero For? 

ViaHero is one of the best travel planner apps for those that have limited time to plan their own trip, plus a decent budget for someone else to do so for them. It’s also a great choice for those that like to explore off the beaten track and get recommendations from locals instead of visiting tourist hotspots. 

Who Is ViaHero Not For? 

Due to the cost, ViaHero isn’t a good option for those traveling on a budget. It also may not be a great choice for those that are visiting a city for the first time and want to see the most popular landmarks and attractions. 

Being a newer service, only “heroes” from a limited number of cities are available at this time. If you’re visiting an area without a local “hero,” you won’t be able to use the service. 

Best Travel Planning App for Those That Love Reviews: Tripadvisor 

Tripadvisor is another of the itinerary planning apps that’s well-known to the majority of travelers. Along with a browser version, Tripadvisor has a convenient app that can help with everything from booking accommodation to discovering places to visit. 

Tripadvisor is free to use and has information for almost every city across the globe. Tripadvisor will offer an overview of the city you search for, along with hotel, restaurant, and activity recommendations. Best of all, all suggestions include reviews from travelers who have visited. 

Tripadvisor Features 

Things to Do  

Tripadvisor suggests a range of places to visit and activities to try in the destination you’re visiting. Along with searching the “Things to Do” section, you can search for specific landmarks and attractions to get more information on them. Whichever way you search, you’ll also have access to reviews from travelers who have visited the landmark or attraction or tried the activity.  

Restaurants 

You can also access restaurant suggestions for the destinations you’re heading to. Again, reviews from those who have dined at each establishment are available. You can also select categories, such as types of cuisine, to narrow down your search. Many restaurants offer the option to reserve via Tripadvisor too. 

Hotels 

Looking for a place to stay? Tripadvisor has you covered! Simply input the dates you need accommodation for, number of guests, and other filters like budget, if applicable, to view hotel results. You can then go straight to the hotel website from Tripadvisor or view deals from hotel booking sites like Hotels.com. 

Itinerary Maps and Lists

When you find activities you want to try, landmarks you intend to visit, and restaurants you wish to dine at, you can add them to a map and list. By adding these things to a map, you can easily see where everything you want to do is located, and develop day-by-day plans. Unfortunately, you can’t create an actual day-to-day itinerary via Tripadvisor. 

Who Is Tripadvisor For? 

This app is great for learning more about attractions, landmarks, restaurants, and accommodation via reviews. If you like to hear opinions from real travelers before committing to plans, you’ll appreciate Tripadvisor. It also has amazing discovery features, making Tripadvisor ideal for travelers that are looking for suggestions on things to do in the locations they’re visiting. 

Who Is Tripadvisor Not For? 

Tripadvisor isn’t ideal for planning day-to-day itineraries. While you can create maps and lists of all the places you want to go, these can’t be separated into individual days. That can be frustrating for travelers, especially if going on a multi-day or week trip. 

Using Tripadvisor to access reviews and combining this research with a full travel itinerary planner, like Wanderlog , is recommended.  

Other Itinerary Planning Apps to Consider 

While we rank the above five as the best travel planner apps on the market, the following eight apps are worth checking out too!

GEOVEA allows you to plan trips, store details like flight and accommodation info, and search for activity suggestions. This travel planning software also has budgeting features. You can estimate the cost of the activities included in the itinerary to see the overall cost of your trip. 

While you can use the company’s website on your phone, there isn’t an app. The standard version of the software is free but comes with limitations. To have full access to the app, you must purchase a subscription which starts at $29.99/year.  

Hipherd is one of the best free travel planner apps for those looking for a place to store travel inspiration. It allows you to save a range of travel content that you find across the web, such as travel articles, videos, and other information on destinations you want to visit.  

As with Pinterest, you can create “boards” to organize content by destination or other categories. You can view the collections of other users too. You can also create maps that show all the attractions you want to visit. Best of all, Hipherd costs nothing to use. 

Inspirock is a free travel itinerary planning  software that creates day-to-day itineraries for you based on data you input. Once a list of suggested places to visit has been generated, you can edit the itinerary to remove and add activities. You can also access accommodation suggestions, car and flight deals, and booking links. 

Learn more about this travel planner by taking a look at our Inspirock review ! 

Jubel is one of the great itinerary planning apps for those that are looking to discover new destinations. You start by answering a questionnaire to highlight travel likes, dislikes, and other preferences. A customized itinerary for a surprise destination is then created for you. This service does come at a cost, with Jubel users needing a trip budget of at least $1,500 for a solo-traveler trip or $1,100/per traveler for multi-person trips. 

Pilot 

Pilot is one of the free travel planner apps that’s perfect for travelers wanting to create itineraries as a group. You can add travel information, like flight bookings, to your online account, along with adding the activities you’ll do each day to an itinerary. It’s also easy to collaborate on one trip itinerary as a group. As mentioned, Pilot is free to use, but there is not a mobile app, so you must use the software in-browser. 

Portico 

Portico is another recommended app for planning itineraries, organizing travel information, and searching for activity suggestions. Travel confirmation emails (transport bookings, accommodation reservations, etc.) can be added manually or simply email them to Portico to add to your account. You can also search for travel inspiration in-app and add places you want to visit to itineraries and lists. Portico is free and can be used in-browser or via an iOS app. 

Tripscout 

Tripscout is one of the best travel planner apps for trip inspiration and high-quality travel content. You can search an array of content in-app to learn about new destinations and attractions. If you discover things you’d like to do and places you’d like to go, you can add them to lists, itineraries, and maps to begin planning your next adventure! Tripscout is also always free to use. 

Tripsy 

Tripsy is another organization-focused itinerary planning app. This app stores travel information, such as flight confirmations and other transport info, restaurant reservations, and the like.  You can also get notifications, for example relating to your flight status, and can easily share your itinerary with friends and family. 

You can integrate your plans with third-party maps and calendars and can email confirmations as well as adding them manually. Tripsy has a free and paid-for Pro version that offers additional benefits, including unlimited itineraries. 

The Best Travel Apps for Flights and Hotels

Need transport or accommodation deals? These four travel planner apps are here to help! 

Snaptravel 

Snaptravel offers amazing deals on flights and hotels. Simply enter your travel dates and destination(s), and a selection of customized offers will be served to you. Customers benefit from rate and fare reductions of 30-50%, and Snaptravel is free to use. 

Discover more about saving on hotels and flights with this app by reading our Snaptravel review . 

Scott’s Cheap Flights 

Scott’s Cheap Flights provides users with incredible flight deals out of their local airport. You’ll receive deal emails each day with fare reductions of up 90% off applied. Scott’s Cheap Flights offers a free version and paid-for options, which allow you to receive business and first-class deals and add multiple departure airports. 

Read our Scott’s Cheap Flights review to learn more about this company! 

Dollar Flight Club 

Dollar Flight Club is another company offering steep discounts on flights. Enter your departure airport at sign-up and you’ll be emailed daily with great deals to an array of destinations. There is a free version, but this only offers access to 20% of deals. For the best results, upgrade to Premium ($69/year) or Premium Plus ($99/year.) Users can expect to save 60-90% on flights, however, you don’t have the option to get deals for specific destinations.  

Want to find out more? Read our Dollar Flight Club review . 

RometoRio 

Rome to Rio offers an array of transport options that work with your trip and are bookable through the app. This free app can show you flights, car rentals, buses, and trains that will allow you to get from point to point on your itinerary. While Rome2Rio isn’t a deal-based app, you can also benefit from cheaper transport rates when using the app. You can also find accommodation and activity suggestions via Rome2Rio, but cannot create itineraries.

Not sure which of these travel planner apps to choose? Give Wanderlog a try ! It costs nothing to do so, and we guarantee that you’ll love it.

The 8 Best Travel Budgeting Tools of 2024

You will never travel without this app again

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The best travel apps for iOS and Android

The smartphone is the modern-day travel agent. From the palm of your hand, you can book flights, plan accommodations, and even reserve a seat at a seaside restaurant using nothing more than your phone.

Finding the most affordable flight and hotel and making sure you’ll have plenty of cash to spend during your trip can be challenging. Check out these travel-booking apps to be a master planner. Once your trip is booked, you can use the best flight-tracking apps to make sure traveling is as seamless as possible. You’ll also need some directions once you’ve arrived to make sure you get to your hotel and see everything that you want to see, so we’ve included apps for that too.

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Planning your itinerary

While many of us have canceled travel plans this past year due to restrictions on travel, there’s no time like the present to plan your next vacation. Our favorite travel apps for iOS and Android can help you enjoy a stress-free vacation where all you should be thinking about is having an amazing time.

Airport travel, especially in the United States, can be a confusing and daunting experience. MyTSA, a U.S. government-sponsored app, demystifies all the rules you need to follow in order to avoid a stare down and possible delays by security agents who are trying to do their jobs. Discover which items you can bring with you through the security checkpoint and onto the aircraft, request live assistance from the Transportation Safety Administration, check how historically busy your chosen airport will be on a given day, check crowd-sourced security wait times and offer your own estimates, check for delays and current weather conditions, and find out how to access and sign up for TSA PreCheck to get you through security in a jiffy. New updates customize the Dashboard, let you view airports in a map, and get directions to the airport.

iOS   Android

Flights, hotels, rental cars — Skyscanner has got you covered. The app searches for the most affordable and best options via its travel partners. Similar to Google Flights , you can see the cheapest dates to fly, and you can also get alerts when prices change. If you’re not sure where exactly you want to go, Skyscanner offers a category that lets you explore Top Deals from your nearest airport as well as a curated list of destinations at affordable prices. You can now monitor your bookings with status updates in Trips and move booked flights from one trip to another. This lets you move things around without losing your saved details. New versions let you discover which countries have low entry restrictions and no quarantine regulations. With flexible booking and free cancellation options, you won’t lose money if your plans change.

For many, Kayak is the go-to trip planning destination — and for good reason. Like Skyscanner, Kayak searches across various travel sites for rental cars, hotels, and flights. Kayak often has exclusive deals, and you can set price alerts and use Price Forecast to see whether you should buy now or wait. Kayak also acts as a trip planner, offering important details at a glance, like your hotel confirmation number or gate number. You can also access these details in real time and on devices such as the Apple Watch. The app now suggests hotels at launch and can even pinpoint results if you’re traveling with kids, while the car search now supports addresses. From hotels to guest houses, the app displays different categories of accommodation to help you narrow down where you’re spending the night, complete with sleeping arrangements so you can plan and book your next stay.

If you’re looking for the cheapest possible price for a plane ticket, you need to download Hopper. Like Kayak and Skyscanner, you can look at the cheapest dates to fly, but Hopper prides itself on telling you when to buy your tickets via push notifications. The company says it can save you up to 40% on your next flight by analyzing and tracking billions of flights. The user interface is simple, and Hopper says you can book a flight in 60 seconds or less. You can now set a watch for a specific hotel you want to stay in instead of setting a watch for the entire city where it’s located.

Whether it’s legal in the city you’re visiting or not, Airbnb is a household name. The app undercuts hotels by offering far cheaper prices and a more authentic experience by allowing you to stay with a local, or in their home. The app also offers a feature called Trips , which offers Experiences to choose from during your stay — these are curated events you can partake in with local guides. Eventually, the app will become an all-in-one travel app that lets you plan your day, book a car, and more. The latest update includes improvements to the browsing functionality for a new way of searching.

Hotel Tonight

Did your Airbnb plans fall through? Did your flights get delayed at your layover? You never know what will happen with your booking, and Hotel Tonight is a reliable service that thrives on last-minute deals. The company partners with hotels to offer discounts on empty rooms, and you’ll be able to book one in under 10 seconds. You also get 24/7 customer service from the Hotel Tonight team in case something goes awry. The app has launched a Daily Drop feature that offers a super-economical deal for the day. You can also book multiple rooms in a single go and broadcast that info via group chat. The new Local Getaways is available at a glance from the new Hotel Tonight widget to show you the best deals nearby.

Booking.com

With Booking.com, you can find the best hotel deals at a moment’s notice, or in advance. The handy hotel comparison feature lets you compare features and prices, with over 135 million reviews from other users to help you choose your accommodation. Hotels, motels, B&Bs, and luxury apartments for your next trip are all bookable in seconds, with paperless confirmation, no booking or credit card fees, and 24/7 support from the Booking.com team.

Get a ride from 600-plus airports in more than 10,000 cities worldwide, Uber is the global king of ridesharing apps . The app pioneered on-demand services, and it can be particularly handy when you’re abroad. You can quickly request a car within the app after perusing an assortment of differing vehicle rates and fare quotes. Afterward, you can connect with your personal driver, track the approaching car’s location, and securely pay your fare using a credit card — no cash needed. Rather than trying to find a taxi or a taxi stand, just bring one straight to you. Uber is constantly updating its app to improve features like trip sharing, ride selection, and tipping. Updates improve localization across the app.

Google Maps

Google Maps is an essential travel app to have. It offers directions for travel by car, on public transit, on foot, by cab, or by bicycle. You’ll find it fairly reliable in offering up local public transportation options in many countries, and you can also download specific areas for offline use. You can also use Maps to find out when places like museums or restaurants close and check to see how busy a place is in real time along with using the app to find local restaurants, bars, and attractions. You can even search for hotels by features like free Wi-Fi, pet friendliness, or air conditioning, for example. You can now view and manage all your favorite places from the Your Places page. You can also use Google Assistant while driving, so you can focus on the road and quickly get estimated arrival times and step-by-step directions to destinations you’ve saved.

With a growing list of countries, Citymapper is one of the best tools to find and use public transportation. It connects with a few ridesharing services, offers the fastest way to arrive at your destination, and best of all, lets you check out subway and train times offline for a number of cities. You can subscribe to specific train or bus lines, and the app can even alert you when you need to get off the bus, which is handy when you’re riding for the first time in a new country. The app now features a SuperRouter that lets you view floating brands like cycles, scooters, mopeds, car sharing with full travel times — including walking and availability. A wheelchair-accessible section is now available for some locations. The newest version features new Routing Powers: Fast for the fastest route, with routes updated and re-ranked every 60 seconds, and Price, which compares fares to find the cheapest route.

Preparation and finding places

There’s always something we forget to do before a trip, whether it’s failing to pack sunscreen or change some currency. Take a look at these apps to keep you on track. Looking for a spot for lunch? Have some extra time and want to check out another museum? Scroll down for apps that offer up things to do and the best-rated places to eat during your stay.

Making a checklist of everything you need to pack can be useful, but what if one’s already made for you? PackPoint looks at the weather forecast for the dates and location of your trip. It will also ask you to select activities you may participate in during your trip, like a meeting for business, a swim at a pool, or a fancy dinner. It will then offer up a list of items you should pack based on these activities, along with general items you’d need on any trip. You can remove items you don’t think are necessary as well as share lists with others in case your friends need some help, too. You can now hide or tap and hold to reorder items on your list.

Xe Currency

While it’s not the prettiest app, Xe Currency is one of the more robust currency converter apps available for both iOS and Android . It’s constantly being updated and offers live exchange rates for every world currency and precious metals. What’s neat is that it can store the most recent rates, so you can access them if your device is offline. Also neat is support for Siri Shortcuts . You can now monitor up to 20 currencies at the same time.

Mobile Passport

Traveling to the U.S.? Mobile Passport lets you skip the regular line to enter the country and is officially authorized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. All you need to do to skip long lines is download this app and add your passport information — you can do this quickly by scanning it with your phone’s camera. Mobile Passport is accepted at more than two dozen airports in the U.S., so check ahead of time to see if your airport supports the app. A premium version is available for $15 per year and offers the convenience of a digital scanner and secure storage of your passports.

TripIt organizes all your travel plans in one place — just email your confirmations to them and they’ll create a master itinerary that syncs to your calendar and can be shared with your travel buddies. You can even store your travel documents in the app. Upgrade to Pro for $49 per year and you’ll enjoy additional features like flight alerts, terminal notifications, and seat tracker, which notifies you if better seats become available, as well as updates on security wait times and searchable airport maps with walking directions. New updates let you find the latest information for airlines you’re travelling with, including food and drinks service, cleaning procedures, middle-seat policy, and more. If your reservations include PDF files, you can share the files you upload — right from the app.

Tripadvisor

Tripadvisor is a catch-all app when it comes to travel. You can quickly peruse millions of reviews, opinions, videos, and photos pertaining to just about anything related to your trip — bars, restaurants, hotels, airlines, and more. You can use Tripadvisor’s Near Me function to find well-reviewed places close by, but the best feature the app has to offer is the number of countries it supports — it’s just about everywhere, making it a necessary guide for every traveler. You can also ask specific travel questions in the app’s forums or add your own reviews in a similar fashion to Yelp. New updates let you access your personal travel feed, find friends and get expert advice, and save travel ideas for the future. Improvements to the app offer access to coronavirus health and safety information for hotels, restaurants and experiences, let you book reservations with free cancellation, and organize and share ideas.

Yelp has officially become the Yellow Pages of restaurants and bars, and its use extends not just to the U.S., but all around the world. Its most powerful feature is the sheer number of reviews housed in the Yelp app — it’s an excellent resource for when you’re looking to hit some of the best spots in the country you’re visiting. Yelp also offers hours of operation, a phone number for listings, and sometimes even a menu, so you can be as prepared as possible before heading out. Businesses have been adding more health and safety information all year.

Language and day-to-day apps

If you’re traveling to a country where your native tongue isn’t the official language, you may as well pack a few of the best language apps to translate on the go or brush up on your language skills. We also have a handful of miscellaneous apps you may find useful during your time abroad.

If you need to get online fast without an expensive cellular connection, WiFi Map is the place to go for worldwide information. This app shows you the nearest free hot spots, complete with passwords and user comments. The app offers full map navigation to get you to the right place and lets you filter your search and test for connection speed. A network scan checks for intruders. There are even offline maps for travelers and a VPN (with the pro version) for secure, anonymous connections. You can also add new Wi-Fi connections yourself to help other travelers in your location.

Google Translate

Google Translate provides translations, which are now more conversational thanks to machine learning , between more than 100 different languages, allowing you to listen to translations out loud and translate dictation and your own handwriting on the screen. You can star your favorite words or phrases for offline access, view dictionary results for a single word or phrase, or use Siri Shortcuts for bilingual conversations. Look for more regional options for speech in English (U.S., U.K., Australia, and India), Bengali (Bangladesh and India), French (France and Canada), and Spanish (Mexico and Spain). You can now continuously translate someone speaking a different language in near real time.

If you’ve booked your trip months ahead of time, try tackling the country’s language in Duolingo. It offers beginner-level courses, but it’s also a great tool for those looking to brush up on a language. You can also chat with bots in select languages, which can be particularly helpful when you’re trying to learn the phrases you’re likely to use the most abroad. You can take placement tests to move up to tougher sections. Leaderboards get you into that competitive spirit with fellow users.

Memrise has more languages than Duolingo, and the app also uses mnemonics to help you memorize words and phrases. You can view video clips of native speakers the first time you try a new word or phrase, which allows you to hear local pronunciation. Swipe to listen to more audio and compare different pronunciations. The company says the app adapts to your learning style over time, and there’s a pro version that lets you unlock even more features, such as an offline mode.

Changing time zones and battling jet lag can make your travels extremely confusing if you’re moving around a lot. Circa, which is iOS-only, helps travelers track the time in the destination they’re heading to and the location they’re currently in. You can set a clock to match the time in your home country or a place where your loved ones are. The app highlights times in both locations where both parties are likely awake. The calendar ring helps you see your current availability or continue swiping to find an available time slot. This app is also compatible with Apple Watch.

WhatsApp is now home to more than a billion users. The app is free, no matter where you are in the world, and operates over a Wi-Fi connection. Add some fun to your conversations by sending stickers, photos, or videos to your contacts. Enable extra security features, like a Face ID or Touch ID, to unlock the app. You need Wi-Fi or a data phone plan to send messages via WhatsApp, but there are no international calling charges. The only downside is that you can only communicate with people who have the app. The newest versions have updated image and video previews, so you can now see more of the media in chat, and all group participants can now change the Disappearing Messages setting by default.

If you’re using a specific app to stay in touch with your loved ones while you’re traveling, but that app isn’t available in certain countries like China , you’ll need to get creative to ensure you don’t fall off the map. We recommend skirting around this issue by using a virtual private network ( VPN ). VPNs keep your private information inaccessible to others who may be on the same network, making it safer to use public Wi-Fi. NordVPN is our favorite service, partially because it has thousands of servers across the planet. This service will cost you about $12 monthly, but you can test whether you’d like to use it in a free seven-day trial. Additionally, they constantly offer promotions for an even lower monthly subscription fee. The VPN is compatible with phones, tablets, or laptops , and you shouldn’t have any trouble with geo-restrictions as NordVPN has servers across the globe ready to adjust to what you need. Ensure you’ll always have a safe connection, no matter where you are in the world, with a VPN .

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With the introduction of iOS 18.1, Apple has made a crucial change that will make life easier for users eyeing an inbox address change for their account activities. Up till now, if you sought to change the primary email associated with your Apple account, the existing email address had to be deleted first.

Only after deleting the current email address were users able to add a new one for their Apple account. Following the iOS 18.1 update, users can simply change it without any erasure hassle.

There have been several new phones recently released, which typically means there’s going to be plenty of phone deals on previous generations in addition to what the new releases have to offer. There is plenty of savings out there if you’re in the market for iPhone deals, Samsung Galaxy deals, or Google Pixel deals, and here we’re going to look at the best of everything that’s available. If you’d like to shop for specific phone deals you can check out today’s iPhone 15 deals, Samsung Galaxy S24 deals, and Google Pixel 8 deals, but if you don’t have a specific phone in mind just yet read onward for all of the day’s best phone deals. Nokia C300 (Unlocked) — $120, was $140

The Nokia name may trigger nostalgia for the early days of cell phones, but the Nokia C300 is as modern as it gets in an entry-level smartphone. It has an octa-core processor for better performance and multi-tasking, yet still manages to get up to two full days of battery life on a single charge. Its camera system is more on the entry-level end, but it still takes 13-megapixel pictures and has three lenses for different shooting scenarios. This phone comes with a pre-installed, full version of Android 12, allowing you to keep up to date with all the latest features the operating software has to offer.

Previously, we relied on local meteorologists for the weekly weather forecast. Nowadays, with smartphones, we have access to the latest weather forecasts 24/7 right from our pockets. Whether you're planning a vacation, checking the weather for a road trip, or staying informed about potential hurricanes, a wide variety of weather apps are available to meet your specific needs.

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The 9 Best Travel Apps for 2024

Plan. Book. Pack. Go!

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A great travel app can help you get organized. From booking reservations to managing them, from packing to planning, from eating to paying to communicating to getting around, these are our picks for the best travel apps to help you plan your next adventure.

Best for Travel Planning: Kayak

Researching prices is fast and easy.

Finds independent hotels and short term rentals you may not see otherwise.

Book almost any travel method.

App is user-friendly.

Can't take advantage of loyalty programs you may belong to.

The award-winning travel app Kayak allows you to search for flights, hotels, and car rentals. The clean interface gives you a full list of possible options, including reduced hacker fares, where you book outgoing and returning flights with two separate airlines. Set filters to find exactly what you want quickly and easily.

Not sure if now's the right time to pull the trigger? The app answers that question by indicating when prices will go up.

Not a fan of Kayak? Here are our other favorite travel planning apps .

Download For:

Best for Packing Help: PackPoint

Configure trip lists according to your specific plans.

Simple, easy-to-navigate interface.

Hide irrelevant items and add new items to your list.

Must upgrade to Premium to create custom packing lists.

A delight for anyone who hates packing, PackPoint tells you exactly what to bring. First, enter where you're going, when, and for how long. Choose business or leisure, then select the activities you'll be doing. The app develops a list based on your information and expected weather. Check items off as you pack, or swipe to remove ones you don't need.

The paid-for premium version ($2.99) removes ads, gives you custom activities and packing templates, and integrates TripIt and Evernote.

Best for Last-Minute Hotel Deals: HotelTonight

Book last-minute rooms at great prices.

Browse photos and ratings to get a feel for the hotel.

Can't select your room type.

Prices don't include taxes and fees.

Whether you're a seat-of-your-pants type traveler or want a backup plan in case your reservations don't work out, try HotelTonight. Tell the app where you want to stay and watch the deals appear on your screen. Tap one to get additional details. A few more taps to pay, and you have a room for the night.

You can make reservations further in advance, but the longer you wait, the better the deals are.

Best for Navigating: Citymapper

Find out which method is fastest (for example, train vs. Lyft).

Know the cost of your chosen route ahead of time.

See preferred routes to avoid the rain.

Not all transportation services offer updates through Citymapper.

Not all cities are in the app's coverage area.

Navigating a new city can be maddening if you don't know how to use the local transportation systems. With Citymapper, you'll get around like a local in no time, exploring and enjoying your new surroundings.

Pick your city, then choose a location or your preferred mode of transportation. Citymapper gives you complete, clear instructions on how to reach your destination hassle-free, whether walking, taking an Uber, or traveling by train.

Be sure to switch to the right city before downloading the app.

Best for Travel Tips: Foursquare City Guide

Find great places to eat and drink.

Tips and advice from members of a global community.

Keep a history of the places you've been.

Use of GPS can deplete your battery.

This app makes finding somewhere to eat or a fun activity easy. Enter the area you want to search and what you're looking for, such as breakfast, nightlife, or things to do. Use the flexible filters (distance, price, open now, and places you've been) to narrow your search. Tap your selection to see additional details, including ratings and photos. If you like the location, add it to a custom list.

Best for Finding Your Way Around: Google Maps

Maps for over 220 countries and territories.

Information on hundreds of millions of businesses.

Real-time updates help you beat traffic.

Search and navigate with offline maps.

Some features aren't available in all countries.

Google Maps is great for finding your way around in your city or anywhere in the world. Get the best route with automatic rerouting based on live traffic updates and road closures. Find information about businesses, such as if a restaurant is open. If you're somewhere with spotty internet, download an area map in advance and use it to navigate.

Best Currency Converter: XE Currency

Reliable exchange rates and charts.

Monitor up to 10 currencies.

Access live rates for every world currency and precious metal, including Bitcoin.

Perform global money transfers.

Need the Pro version if you want to monitor more than 10 currencies.

This currency converter and money-transfer tool allows you to determine exchange rates quickly and easily. Type an amount in one denomination and see the results in as many other denominations as you want. To add another currency, tap the editing icon and search for the one that corresponds to the place you'll be visiting.

Use the charts function to see how currency rates fluctuate throughout the day. The app's global transfer function allows you to send and receive money worldwide.

Best Language Translator: iTranslate

Translations are available in more than 100 languages.

Phrasebook has more than 250 predefined phrases.

Switch between dialects and voices.

Must subscribe to the Pro version to unlock some of the most useful features, such as offline translation mode.

Gone are the days of fumbling with a paper dictionary as you try to assemble sentences in a language you don't know. Use this app to type or speak your sentence and get the translation in your chosen language. A handy expansion feature lets you display the result on your screen to show to locals you're trying to communicate with. The iTranslate Phrasebook is a convenient way of looking up and learning common expressions and questions.

Best Food Finder: Zomato

Search by restaurant, cuisine, or dish.

Browse restaurant menus, photos, user ratings, and reviews.

Book a table through the app.

Find restaurants around you in Map View.

The service is not available in most areas.

Perfect for traveling foodies, this app has it all, including recommendations for a nice lunch out, trending restaurants, nightlife picks, delivery services, and where to get food to go—looking for something specific? Search for a dish or ingredient. When you find something yummy, tap it for a map, menu, reviews, and photos. When you're finished, bookmark, share, and review your experience.

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10 Best Travel TRIP PLANNER APPs To Have in 2024

In a fast-paced world where the stress of work and school is overwhelming, we all need a break to de-stress our minds. Traveling is one good way to take your mind off of stressful things – a breather. And a scheduled vacation gives you something to look forward to.

Whether it’s a local trip alone, a family holiday, or a getaway with your best friends, it just excites you to wish the day would come faster. 

10 Best Trip Planner Apps in 2024

The freeform app.

• TripIt: Travel Planner

Hopper – Flight & Hotel Deals

• Sygic Travel Maps Trip Planner

Roadtrippers: Trip Planner

Tripadvisor, travelspend: track travel expense & trip budget, tripcase – travel organizer app, travel planning apps for your next trip.

The Freeform app is an endless whiteboard that lets users add information from a variety of websites, photos, videos and files.

Because the boards are kept in iCloud, they can be accessed from any device anytime inspiration hits. While you and your travel companions plan your dream trip, the specifics can be shared with several individuals working together on the same whiteboard, making them an ongoing work in progress.

The Freeform app is free to iPhone users on iOS 16.2, iPad users on 16.2, and Mac users on Ventura MacOS Venture 13.1. 

Download the brand-new app here .

Read our full post: Apple Launches New Travel App Freeform – What to Know

Wanderlog Trip Planner App

Wanderlog is your all-in-one destination for planning future trips, sharing travel guides, and blogging past trips.

Its trip planning features are incredibly flexible: you can research destinations and activities, organize reservations by connecting your email, and map out a day itinerary with start/end times. You can also add notes and links all throughout.

Everything is stored offline so you can access your itinerary when traveling abroad. For road trips, it calculates the time and distance between places and exports them to Google Maps (and there are no limits to the number of stops you have on a trip!).

Plus, there’s a fun social component: collaborate with friends on itineraries, write your own travel guide, and blog about past trips. Wanderlog is available on the web and on your smartphone, so you can seamlessly plan while at home and on-the-go.

iOS  /  Android

TripIt: Trip Planner App

If you need any help organizing the dozens of itineraries, TripIt is the app for you. Users simply need to forward your flight, hotel, restaurant, and car rental confirmation emails to [email protected] and the app will create a free master doc for each of your trips. The best thing about this app is that you can get access to your itinerary anywhere, even without an internet connection. 

In addition, the Pro version will find you alternative routes for canceled flights and send out notifications for delayed flights, cancellations, and more from the airlines. 

iOS / Android

Rome2rio is a versatile travel planning app that simplifies the process of finding and booking travel options. It’s a handy tool for travelers seeking to explore various transportation choices between destinations. Rome2rio offers users a comprehensive view of travel options, including flights, trains, buses, ferries, and even driving directions.

Key features of Rome2rio include:

• Route Information: The app provides detailed information on different routes, including estimated travel times, costs, and the number of transfers required.
• Booking Integration: Users can book flights, train tickets, and other transportation options directly through the app, streamlining the booking process.
• Map Integration: Rome2rio integrates with maps, allowing users to visualize their travel routes and explore nearby attractions.
• Multi-Modal Travel: It offers options for combining various modes of transportation, making it easy to plan complex journeys.
• Accurate Pricing: The app provides real-time pricing information, helping users make informed decisions based on their budget.
• Offline Access: Rome2rio offers offline access to previously searched routes, which can be handy when traveling without a data connection.

Hopper is an amazing trip planner app to have on your phone. The app predicts airfares up to 1 year in advance, with 95% accuracy. It analyzes over billions of flight prices and hotels within the day – telling you whether to book your trip now or wait for just a little longer.

Here’s how it works: Key in your destination and a color-coded calendar will display the cheapest and most expensive date to fly. The app will then recommend you to either book the flight now or sit it out and wait for airfare to get cheaper. Also, you can filter predictions to custom-fit your trip – remove long layovers, extra fees, restrictions, and more. 

And if you worry about missing out the cheap flight bookings, don’t be! Hopper will send you a notification when fares have dropped to its lowest point.

SYGIC Travel Maps Trip Planner

Sygic Travel Maps , the new version of Sygic Trip Planner, is the first travel app to display all of the attractions and places a traveler needs to see and visit on a single map.

Sync your trips with the Sygic Travel app and find hidden gems in all cities you visit. The app boast a large database that allows you to find the best hotels, tourist attractions, museums, restaurants, bars, and stores wherever you go.

This mobile app also let you download offline maps and guides, which come in helpful when traveling to remote locations with poor or non-existing Wi-Fi.

It also has a dedicated section to worldwide places of interest for travel business. Get location information for individual cities, countries, continents, or the entire planet.

The app is available in 18 languages.

iOS / Android iOS

Planning on a cross-country road trip ? Roadtrippers is the app for you! Not everyone is fond of waiting long hours at the airport while sitting through your red-eye flight. Hit the road with your friends instead.

Roadtrippers provides everything you need to know on your road trip. Just enter your starting point, destination, and let the app do its work for you! From camping sites to rest stops, outdoor activities, exciting adventures along the way that you didn’t know existed. This app is the perfect buddy for your road trip regardless of your mode of transportation – a sedan, a rental car, or a huge family RV.

Most of us dream of going to places! But planning an amazing trip to places we have not been to is pretty hard as you don’t know where to stay, what to do, places to eat, and adventures to try. We mostly rely on recommendations, most of which are not even right, that we find online. 

TripAdvisor has over millions of travel recommendations on hotels, top dining spots, must-do experiences, and treasured gems to over 8 million destinations at your perusal. It is an all-in-one app that lets you book tables at restaurants and compares low prices on hotels and flights.

You can also follow friends and travel experts for advice that match your interests, watch videos, and read articles. In return, you can share your experiences, reviews, and helpful guides for other users too!

Setting up a budget for your trip is easy, however, sticking to it is hard. TravelSpend will help you with that. It starts with entering your budget and expenses over multiple days so you don’t go overboard. The app helps you in sticking to your budget effectively.

Being in another country is not a problem at all: enter your expenses in any currency and the app will automatically convert it to your home currency.

Track your travel expenses whether going on a solo around-the-world trip or backpacking holiday with your best friends. The app allows you to share your trip with your friends and track your expenses together. Pay debts, split bills, and check your balances – all in the app!

TripCase, a comprehensive travel organizer app, has emerged as a popular choice among travelers seeking a streamlined and efficient way to manage their journey details.

Here’s a breakdown of its key features and functionalities:

Centralized Itinerary Management : TripCase allows users to consolidate all their travel details, including flights, hotels, and car rentals, into a single, easily accessible itinerary.

Real-time Flight Alerts : The app keeps travelers informed with up-to-the-minute notifications on flight statuses, including delays, cancellations, and gate changes.

Itinerary Sharing : TripCase offers a sharing option that enables users to send their travel plans to friends, family, or colleagues.

Travel Directions and Maps : To aid navigation in unfamiliar locations, the app provides directions and maps.

Nearby Recommendations : TripCase offers recommendations for restaurants, attractions, and other services close to the traveler’s location.

Document Storage : For added convenience, the app allows users to store essential travel documents digitally, ensuring that important information like passport details, visas, and insurance policies are readily available.

Customizable Notifications : Users can customize their notification preferences, choosing what types of alerts they receive and how they are notified, tailoring the app to suit individual needs and preferences.

iOS / Android 

Hi, great List. I couldn’t travel without my Apps! I have one App you could check out =) Its called ” ATM Fee Saver” and it gives a list with all ATMs and their fees and limit. I found it super helpful and it really helped me to save some money. Best regards, Charlotte

Thank you for your suggestions! Those apps are very useful and various

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The 10 Best Travel Apps

These days, everyone travels with a smartphone. Beyond the ability to take endless selfies and keep in touch with family back home, they provide us with a never-ending stream of tools and apps to help us plan our travels and deal with any hiccups we encounter on the road.

Unfortunately, while there’s no shortage of travel apps, most of them are terrible.

To help you avoid downloading (and maybe even paying for) apps that aren’t worth your time, I’ve compiled a list of my favorite travel apps. These apps will save you time, money, and help you make the most of your travels. They’re the apps I think every traveler should have on their phone before they leave home.

Table of Contents

1. GetYourGuide

2. loungebuddy, 3. hostelworld, 4. skyscanner, 6. xe currency converter, 7. google translate, 8. happycow, 9. gasbuddy, 10. wanderboat.

Whether you’re in the planning stages and looking for things to fill out your upcoming itinerary or you’re already in a new country and want something to do later that day, GetYourGuide can help. I’ve used them a bunch and always have a great time!

LoungeBuddy takes the pain out of the process. After entering your credit card, airline status, and lounge memberships, the app tells you which lounges you can access at any given airport. It makes even the longest layover tolerable so you can relax and enjoy your travels. And if you don’t have status, you can book lounge access directly through the app. It’s easy to use, and free to download.  

You can also use the app to see who else is staying at the hostel. You can join a group chat for the hostel and connect with travelers to make plans before you arrive. In short, it’s a must-download app for backpackers and solo travelers. The app is free to download.  

The best feature of the app, however, is the ability to search for flights to everywhere . You simply input your departure airport and the dates you want to travel, and it will bring up all the potential options — from cheapest to most expensive — so you can browse for ideas without needing to check each one manually.

If you want to save money on flights, this app is a must. The app is free too.  

The basic version is free while the pro version is $49 USD per year.  

If you have to stay on budget (and don’t want to get ripped off), download this app. It’s free.  

The app can read out your text too so you can hear how it is properly pronounced, and you can also use your camera to take photos of text that it can translate too (which is helpful if you need to read ingredients while shopping, for example). The app is free.  

The app is free but for $9.99 USD per month, you can upgrade to premium, which saves you 20 cents a gallon (up to 50 gallons) and provides 24/7 roadside assistance.

Wanderboat is an AI-based travel companion site that you can use for inspiration on where to go, what to do, and how to build your itinerary. Its recommendations are highly tailored and customizable to your preferences, and it will provide in-depth explanations, images and video to visualize everything you want to include on your trip.

While it’s important to not spend your entire trip on your phone or social media, there are times when using your smartphone can easily improve the quality of your trip, keep you safe, and save you money. By downloading the apps above, you’ll be able to have a much smoother trip, giving you more time, energy, and money to invest in your next adventure.  

Book Your Trip: Logistical Tips and Tricks

Book Your Flight Find a cheap flight by using Skyscanner . It’s my favorite search engine because it searches websites and airlines around the globe so you always know no stone is being left unturned.

Book Your Accommodation You can book your hostel with Hostelworld . If you want to stay somewhere other than a hostel, use Booking.com as it consistently returns the cheapest rates for guesthouses and hotels.

Don’t Forget Travel Insurance Travel insurance will protect you against illness, injury, theft, and cancellations. It’s comprehensive protection in case anything goes wrong. I never go on a trip without it as I’ve had to use it many times in the past. My favorite companies that offer the best service and value are:

• SafetyWing (best for everyone)
• InsureMyTrip (for those 70 and over)
• Medjet (for additional evacuation coverage)

Want to Travel for Free? Travel credit cards allow you to earn points that can be redeemed for free flights and accommodation — all without any extra spending. Check out my guide to picking the right card and my current favorites to get started and see the latest best deals.

Need Help Finding Activities for Your Trip? Get Your Guide is a huge online marketplace where you can find cool walking tours, fun excursions, skip-the-line tickets, private guides, and more.

Got a comment on this article? Join the conversation on Facebook , Instagram , or Twitter and share your thoughts!

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links above may be affiliate links, and at no additional cost to you, I may earn a commission if you make a purchase. I only recommend products and companies I use. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are mine alone and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities. This page does not include all card companies or all available card offers.

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The best iPad apps of 2023

You've got an iPad, you want the best iPad apps, right?

The best iPad art and design apps

The best education apps for ipad, the best movie and entertainment apps for ipad, the best health, diet, and exercise apps for ipad, the best kids apps for ipad, the best music and audio apps for ipad, the best office and writing apps for ipad, the best ipad photo and video editing apps, the best productivity apps for ipad, the best ipad weather and travel apps.

While the iPad is undoubtedly the all-conquering best tablet range right now, it's the apps that really set it apart, as it arguably has the best selection available of any tablet OS.

But while there are many great apps, finding the best iPad apps can be easier said than done, as there are lots of lesser ones to sift through.

That's why we're here to help, as we've spent hundreds of hours testing the best free and paid-for iPad apps, and have helpfully split them into multiple categories to let you browse for what you actually need. 

Whether you want the best art and design apps, the best education apps, the best apps for entertainment, music, kids, fitness or anything else, we've got you covered.

Of course, if you need a better iPad, our list of the best iPads around is there for you too - but if you've just been given a new tablet, then these are the titles that you need to be checking out - starting with our favorite new app this month.

Oh, and if you're looking for something fun, then we've also rounded up the best iPad games you can download right now.

• Looking for an upgrade? Check out the best cheap iPad deals available now

iPad app of the month: Ableton Note ($5.99/£4.99/AU$9.99)

Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Ableton Note brings a streamlined take on Ableton’s popular desktop software to your iPad. This isn’t full Ableton Live. Instead, it’s best thought of as a musical sketchpad – a place in which to try out ideas wherever inspiration hits, which can then be worked up on a PC or Mac.

The interface makes it a cinch to work up loops fashioned from drum kits, synths and samples. An intuitive audition/confirm system lets you gradually build loops through adding new notes, and individual notes can be nudged if your timing is off.

Loops can become part of a greater composition by duplicating them, working up variations, and playing them together in the app’s grid view. It’s quality stuff, whether you’re a jobbing pro or someone who’d always fancied making music but felt intimidated by more complex and less welcoming apps.

• These are the best photo editing apps you can download right now

Our favorite iPad apps for painting, sketching, drawing, CAD, pixel art, graphic design and animation.

Affinity Publisher 2 for iPad ($19.99/£17.99/AU$30.99)

Affinity Publisher 2 for iPad joins Serif’s existing creative apps for iPad - Affinity Photo and Affinity Designer. Publisher, as its name might suggest, is all about layout design, giving you the means to create everything from a poster to a magazine, right on Apple ’s tablet.

It’s full-fat desktop-grade fare. That means you’re not going to fashion a layout in a few clicks, but you do get fine-grained control over everything you work on – to a level that previously had only existed on a powerful PC or Mac. This means you can dig into complex typography along paths, work with master pages, import assets from other apps, export to a range of formats, and so much more. 

At the price, it represents astonishing value for money, whether you’re a jobbing pro or someone who’d just like to try their hand at a pro-level layout app.

Acrylic ($1.99/£1.79/AU$2.99)

Acrylic is called a wallpaper engine by its creator – and there’s certainly scope within to fashion beautiful backgrounds for your iPad and other devices. But for our money, it’s just a really interesting app for working up abstract digital art.

The minimalist interface invites you to create a gradient or a scene. The former provides control over shades, subdivisions and points, and you can temporarily display a wireframe to better understand the mesh. Scenes instead have you extrude 3D shapes from a canvas and experiment with depth of field, color and film grain.

Anything you create is authentically saved to the app for subsequent experimentation. And any image can be exported in up to 4K , ready to use or expand on elsewhere.

Pixaki 4 Pro ($26.99/£23.99/AU$41.99)

Pixaki provides iPad owners with a way to craft pixel art. The style originated by necessity during the 1970s and 1980s, and might seem obsolete in an era where individual pixels are impossible to see on a screen. But the aesthetic remains popular, perhaps because you instinctively know thought has gone into the placement of every dot.

With this latest revision, Pixaki feels modern. The interface is sleek, offering fast access to key tools and yet getting out of your way when you want to draw. More transforms would be nice (such as flip and rotate), but the shape, fill and brush tools are excellent, the layers system works well (and allows you to import reference images), and there’s a keyframe toolbar when you want to make artwork move.

Unsure? Check out the free ‘intro’ version , which limits canvas size, layers and animation frames, but is otherwise full-featured. 

Zen Brush 3 ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Zen Brush 3 is a next-generation painting app that focuses purely on the experience of working with East Asian ink brushes. Previous iterations of the app have been tactile and beautiful, but this release expands on the original premise in meaningful ways.

The new water feature provides scope for blending and bleeding, and a greatly expanded palette removes the severe limitations on hues that plagued earlier versions of the app. Plenty of templates enable you to augment your artwork with everything from paper to 3D objects.

Elsewhere, the brush action and ink emulation remain unsurpassed on iPad, making for a particularly beguiling experience when armed with an Apple Pencil. Great stuff for when you want to create Asian-influenced art, or just fancy something a bit different to relax with.

Voxel Max ($6.99/£6.99/AU$10.99)

Voxel Max is a pro-grade app for creating voxel art - essentially, pixel art in 3D. So instead of carefully placing pixels on a flat canvas, you plot cubes in a 256×256×256-pixel build area.

Although compatible with iPhone, the Voxel Max experience revels in the iPad’s extra screen acres. You get more room to view and manipulate your creation, and Apple Pencil support for when getting all painterly with shaped brushes (spheres; larger cubes) rather than adding individual cubes one at a time.

For professional illustrators, there are plenty of tools to dig into, including non-destructive transforms and face extrusions. But newcomers should find the app quite welcoming too, with its online help center and pre-built models to experiment with.

Procreate 5X ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

Procreate 5X is the latest iteration of the best painting app for iPad. Like its predecessors, this version has a minimal interface that gets out of your way while you work, yet packs a lot of power that’s placed within easy reach.

The existing and hugely impressive brush editor has now been augmented with a range of draw-on filters, including noise, blur, glitch and chromatic aberration. You can swiftly add a gradient map to any layer, auto-fill selections with color, precisely transform selections, and instantly create palettes from favorite snaps.

For newcomers, this is an immediate, intuitive proposition; and for long-time fans, Procreate 5X further pushes the app’s ambition and opens up yet more creative options. Either way, it’s a huge bargain at this low price.

Pastel (free + $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Pastel is an iPad app for any amateur or professional artist with a thing for color palettes. The second you open the app, you can peruse a collection of pre-loaded examples, which mix reference material (such as colors used on games systems) and hues that simply look great together.

Creating your own palettes is easy. Load a photo and Pastel will extract key colors – or you can start with a blank canvas. An existing palette can be edited at any point, using built-in color pickers. Furthermore, palettes can be exported to PDF, and individual values copied or dragged to other apps.

Pastel is every inch the modern, refined iPad app. It’s simple, usable, and makes excellent use of modern iPad conventions. Generously, you can also try it for free, adding up to 20 items before going 'unlimited' with a one-off IAP.

Linea Sketch (free or $0.99/99p/AU$1.49 per month)

Linea Sketch reasons that sketching on iPad shouldn’t require you to be inundated with too many features. This app therefore gets out of your way so you can get on and draw.

Tools sit at screen edges, making it a cinch to access colors, pen tools, and layers. You can import images to sketch over, work with grids and custom backgrounds, and record your masterpiece’s creation to export and show off on social media later.

With Apple Pencil , the app is especially lovely to use, with straightforward transform controls, responsive line thicknesses, and the superb ZipLine that turns wobbly scribbles into perfect polygons, just by having you pause for a second when you’re done. 

Note that the free version is full-featured, merely watermarking exports and reminding you to support development - so you’ve got no excuse to not check it out.

Looom ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

Looom cleverly rethinks frame-based hand-drawn animation for iPad. Rather than aping desktop tools, it fully utilizes the touchscreen. Ideally, you draw with an Apple Pencil , and use your other hand to move between frames. The process feels fluid - we agree with the creator’s suggestion that it’s akin to playing an instrument rather than using software.

Although a Pencil is preferred, it’s possible to use a finger to paint. And either way, your creations are likely to resemble wobbly scribbles. But Looom is nonetheless a superb entry point for animators, due to its ease of use, and a useful sketchpad for veterans - not least when you consider you can run up to five layers, each with their own unique number of frames.

The lack of share options (such as GIF) is a pity, but SVG export to desktop software is at least provided for pros.

iOrnament Pro ($6.99/£6.99/AU$10.99)

iOrnament Pro resembles a hugely powerful customizable kaleidoscope. As you draw, the app repeats your strokes across the screen on the basis of rulesets you choose to define symmetry types. There’s a range of pen types and brushes, along with bling-like glitter effects; and if you don’t fancy going freehand, you can use geometric shapes or import a photo.

The basics are simple enough for a child, but iOrnament Pro’s toolset lets seasoned artists delve deeper. There’s a layers system, an option for wrapping your work around a sphere, and several export options, including the entire image, single tiles, and a time-lapse recording.

In some ways, iOrnament Pro is a curious beast. It’s not an image editor you necessarily need; but as everything from an experimental design tool to a relaxation aid, it’s one you may well want.

Imaengine Vector (free + $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)

Imaengine Vector is two apps in one. In its most basic form, it’s a photo filter app. Load a picture or use your iPad to take a photo, and you can select from a number of filters. Most of them are eye-popping, transforming your image to anything from ink sketch to abstract art.

That alone is worth the outlay, but tap the ‘editor’ button and Imaengine Vector transforms into a full editing package, enabling you to adjust every stroke, and add to the image with lines and shapes of your own.

The app’s interface is a touch esoteric, and would do better if it avoided shoving all the buttons right at the edge of the iPad’s display. But that’s the only major shortfall in this powerful app, which can produce some seriously arresting visuals.

Live Home 3D (free + IAP)

Live Home 3D is for people who fancy partaking in some interior design. Whether you want to experiment with your own home, or design an entirely new one, there are plenty of tools here for doing so – in 2D and 3D alike.

Even for free, there’s loads to delve into, from creating bespoke floor plans to projecting your finished masterwork on to real-world surroundings in AR. Thousands of materials and models are available to deck your virtual home out so that it resembles the real thing.

There are two paid tiers: Standard ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99) removes watermarks and is flexible regarding import/export; Pro ($19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99) gives you more customization in terms of drawing, output quality, and light editing. In all versions, the app is powerful, usable, and entertaining.

Affinity Designer (US$19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99)

Affinity Designer brings desktop-grade vector illustration to iPad. Its huge range of tools are ideally suited to anything from high-end illustrations through to interface design. Every stroke always remains editable, and you can zoom to an absurd degree, and never lose detail.

The app works nicely with Apple Pencil or your own digits, and has a smart gestural system where holding fingers on the screen mirrors desktop keyboard modifiers. Elsewhere, you can pinch layers to group them, or drag one layer on to another to create a mask.

This is an app you can get lost in – but in a good way. The more you use it, the more you realize its sheer scope. And it even shares a file format with Affinity Photo, so you can bounce documents between the two without losing anything.

Core Animator ($5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99)

Core Animator is an app for creating motion graphics on your iPad. If you’ve ever seen Adobe Animate (formerly Flash), you’ll feel at home. If not, the app might take longer to get to grips with, but you’re helped along by built-in tutorials and Core Animator’s usable, logical interface.

The basics involve adding objects to a canvas and manipulating them at various ‘keyframes’ on the timeline. You can adjust each one’s position, rotation, scale, and opacity, and Core Animator deals with all the frames in between.

It’s worth noting there are no drawing tools, so you must import elements created elsewhere. The app also demands time and patience, but give it both and you can end up with superb results.

Concepts (free + various IAP)

Concepts is an advanced vector-based sketching and design app. Every stroke remains editable, and similar flexibility is evident elsewhere, with varied grids (dot; lined; isometric), definable gestures, and an adjustable interface.

With version 5, Concepts’ design revamp transformed the main toolbar into a space-efficient tool wheel, from which Copic swatches pleasingly explode when you switch colors. As such, the app’s a touch alien at first, and can be fiddly if you don’t have a Pencil.

But Concepts soon becomes natural and fluid in use, and it’s apparent the app’s been designed for touch, rather than a developer hammering desktop concepts into your iPad.

If you’re not a professional architect, illustrator or the like it might be overkill, but if you’re unsure, you can get a feel for the app for free. IAPs subsequently allow you to unlock shape guides, SVG and PDF export, infinite layers, and object packs.

Clip Studio Paint Ex for manga ($8.99/£6.99/AU$11.49 monthly)

Clip Studio Paint Ex for manga brings the popular PC desktop app for digital artists to the iPad. And we mean that almost literally – Clip Studio looks pretty much identical to the desktop release.

In one sense, this isn’t great news – menus, for example, are fiddly to access, but it does mean you get a feature-rich, powerful app. There are loads of brushes and tools, vector capabilities, effect lines and tones for comic art, and onion skinning for animations. It also takes full advantage of Pencil, so pro artists can be freed from the desktop, and work wherever they like.

The app could do with better export and desktop workflow integration, and even some fans might be irked by the subscription model. But Clip Studio’s features and quality mean most will muddle through the former issues and pay for the latter.

Stop Motion Studio Pro ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Animation can be painstaking, whether doing it for your career or just for fun. Fortunately, Stop Motion Studio Pro streamlines the process, providing a sleek and efficient app for your next animated masterpiece.

It caters to various kinds of animation: you can use your iPad’s camera to capture a scene, import images or videos (which are broken down into stills), or use a remote app installed on an iPhone. Although most people will export raw footage to the likes of iMovie, Stop Motion Pro shoots for a full animation suite by including audio and title capabilities.

There are some snags. Moving frames requires an awkward copy/paste/delete workaround. Also, drawing tools are clumsy, making the app’s claim of being capable of rotoscoping a tad suspect. But as an affordable and broadly usable app for crafting animation, it fits the bill.

Our favorite iPad apps for learning something new – from astronomy to human history.

Codea ($14.99/£14.99/AU$22.99)

Codea wants you to use your iPad for creating things – specifically other iPad apps and games. Built around the Lua programming language, Codea is a code editor with a friendlier face than most – to change a color, you just tap and drag; if you get stuck, reference materials are built in. Once you’re done, press play and you can watch your code run, and interact with what you’ve made.

Although you can’t expect to fire up Codea and be troubling the App Store charts within a week, there are many examples you can mess around with, which help you understand the fundamentals of a game or 3D graphics.

If you’re still a bit suspicious that an app exists for creating other apps, do be mindful that there are already apps and games made with Codea available for download. So why not make one yourself?

Brian Cox's Wonders of Life ($0.99/£0.99/AU$1.49)

Brian Cox's Wonders of Life hints at the future of consumable media. At its core, this is an educational journey into over 30 creatures and their habitats. You learn how living things on Earth are interlinked, and the way in which everything is constructed from the same fundamental building blocks.

It’s the presentation, though, that sets the app apart. The main interface comprises sets of 3D scenes you can twirl and explore. Embedded within, you’ll find over a thousand high-res images, short videos narrated by Brian Cox and engaging essays.

The result is something that borrows from magazines, books, television and apps, successfully merging them all into something new. Especially on the larger screen of the iPad, the dazzling visuals and text alike all get a chance to shine.

Solar Walk 2 - Planet Explorer ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)

Solar Walk 2 is a digital orrery. It offers a stylized 3D view of the solar system, and tapping on any planet or moon whisks you toward it within seconds, like you’re piloting a rocket from NASA’s dreams.

The view can be manipulated by standard iOS gestures, although this app is also really nice to just leave in a docked iPad so you can watch moons and planets orbit their parents.

When you want to science things up a bit, though, the app’s ready and willing. An interactive facts panel provides stats, graphs, and the means to crack open a planet to see what’s inside. Add some IAP and you can travel with famous space missions like Voyager 1. In all, it’s a cracking alternative to a real-world orrery – and a lot more portable and interactive, too!

Human Anatomy Atlas 2018 ($24.99/£23.99/AU$38.99)

Human Anatomy Atlas 2018 represents a leap forward for iPad education apps and digital textbooks alike. In short, it turns your iPad into an anatomy lab – and augmented reality extends this to nearby flat surfaces.

You can explore your virtual cadaver by region or system. Additionally, you can examine cross-sections, micro-anatomy (eyes; bone layers; touch receptors, and so on), and muscle actions. If you want to learn what makes you tick, it’s fascinating to spin a virtual body beneath your finger, and ‘dissect’ it by removing sections.

But the AR element is a real prize, giving you a captivating, slightly unnerving virtual body to explore. Ideal fodder for medical students, then, but great even for the simply curious. And although it’s pricey for the latter audience, the app’s often on sale, and has dropped as low as $0.99/£0.99/AU$1.49. Snap it up if you see it cheap.

LookUp ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

There are quite a few dictionary apps on iPad, and most of them don’t tend to stray much from paper-based tomes, save adding a search function. LookUp has a more colorful way of thinking, primarily with its entry screen. This features rows of illustrated cards, each of which houses an interesting word you can discover more about with a tap.

The app is elsewhere a mite more conventional – you can type in a word to confirm a spelling, and access its meaning, etymology, and Wikipedia entry.

The app’s lack of speed and customization means it likely won’t be a writer’s first port of call when working – but it is an interesting app for anyone fascinated by language, allowing you to explore words and their histories in rather more relaxed circumstances.

Redshift Pro (($17.99/£17.99/AU$27.99)

The ‘pro’ bit in Redshift Pro ’s name is rather important, because this astronomy app is very much geared at the enthusiast. It dispenses with the gimmickry seen in some competing apps, and is instead packed with a ton of features, including an explorable planetarium, an observation planner and sky diary, 3D models of the planetary bodies, simulations, and even the means to control a telescope.

Although more workmanlike than pretty, the app does the business when you’re zooming through the heavens, on a 3D journey to a body of choice, or just lazily browsing whatever you’d be staring at in the night sky if your ceiling wasn’t in the way.

And if it all feels a bit rich, the developer has you covered with the slightly cut down – but still impressive – Redshift , for half the outlay.

Sky Guide ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

There are quite a few apps for virtual stargazing, but Sky Guide is the best of them on iPad. Like its rivals, the app allows you to search the heavens in real-time, providing details of constellations and satellites in your field of view (or, if you fancy, on the other side of the world).

Also, when outside during the daytime (at which point stars are inconveniently invisible to the naked eye), you can use augmented reality to map constellations on to a blue sky.

Indoors, it transforms into a kind of reference guide, offering further insight into distant heavenly bodies, and the means to view the sky at different points in history. What sets Sky Guide apart, though, is an effortless elegance. It's simply the nicest app of its kind to use, with a polish and refinement that cements its essential nature.

Earth Primer ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

When you're told you can control the forces of nature with your fingertips that probably puts you more in mind of a game than a book. And, in a sense, Earth Primer does gamify learning about our planet. You get a series of engaging and interactive explanatory pages, and a free-for-all sandbox that cleverly only unlocks its full riches when you've read the rest of the book.

Although ultimately designed for children, it's a treat for all ages, likely to plaster a grin across the face of anyone from 9 to 90 when a volcano erupts from their fingertips.

Journeys of Invention ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

Touch Press somewhat cornered the market in amazing iOS books with The Elements, but Journeys of Invention takes things a step further. In partnership with the Science Museum, it leads you through many of science's greatest discoveries, weaving them into a compelling mesh of stories.

Many objects can be explored in detail, and some are more fully interactive, such as the Enigma machine, which you can use to share coded messages with friends.

What's especially great is that none of this feels gimmicky. Instead, this app points towards the future of books, strong content being married to useful and engaging interactivity.

Our favorite iPad apps for having fun with your iPad, whether reading, watching TV, using Twitter or delving into interactive art.

Save Videos Watch Later ($2.99/£2.49/AU$4.49)

Play: Save Videos Watch Later gives you a place to bookmark YouTube videos, so you can view them later – or dig into saved favorites. You might argue YouTube does this itself, but Play’s feature set goes beyond what YouTube offers.

On iPad, videos can be added to Play via drag and drop from the Subscriptions tab, sharing, Shortcuts, or copying and pasting URLs. The ability to assign tags lets you organize bookmarked videos, and iCloud sync means you can get at your collection on all your Apple devices. 

With its sleek interface, Home screen widgets, easy to filter video list, and low one-off payment, Play is an excellent app to get more from YouTube by organizing what you’d like to watch and ensuring much-loved videos always remain within easy reach.

Book Track (free + $5.99/£4.99/AU$9.99)

Book Track is an app dedicated to helping you read more – whether you prefer paper tomes or those that exist in digital form on your iPad. Libraries can be imported via CSV or from GoodReads, or you can opt to start afresh by way of an online search or scanning book barcodes.

The app affords you great flexibility. Your library can be displayed as cover art or a text-based list. Items can be categorized, including the formation of a wish-list for items you don’t yet own. There are options for saving quotes and tracking loaned books.

Overall, Book Track is a great way to keep tabs on your collection, and even your reading progress through a statistics pane. On iPad, it shines, not least with the info-rich but beautifully designed three-pane view on the bigger 12.9-inch iPad Pro.

Infuse 7 ($0.99/79p/AU$1.49 per month)

Infuse 7 lets you play your digital video collection on your iPad – wherever said videos happen to be stored. Point the app at a cloud service or folders on a home network and it’ll go through your files, adding cover art and descriptions. When you watch, you can pull down subtitles with ease.

The app supports a wide range of formats, and optional Trakt connectivity enables you to sync your watch history, submit ratings, and sound off about what you’ve viewed. The revamped home screen makes for a more custom experience than before, with user-defined lists based on genre, age and ratings.

For what you get, it’s good value – and there are annual and lifetime discounts if you’re a fan. Not sure about splashing out? You can always run the free version, which removes cloud service support and sync, but nonetheless excels for watching videos stored on your local network.

EōN by Jean-Michel Jarre ($8.99/£8.99/AU$13.99)

EōN by Jean-Michel Jarre exists in a similar territory to the algorithmically generated audio apps released on iPad by Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers. Only instead of an endless river of generative ambient audio, you get something akin to an infinite Jarre remix.

This all works better than you might think, with Jarre’s trademark synth washes, electronic beats, and flickering riffs dancing about in a mix that never repeats itself. Although there are quite clearly defined ‘tracks’ of sorts, they’re different every time you fire up the app.

On iPad in particular, the visual component gets a chance to shine. On the larger display, the resulting effect is a little like a desktop Jarre concert – and unlimited iterations for the price of a single new album seems like quite the bargain.

Tayasui Color 2 ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Tayasui Color 2 is a rare iPad coloring app, in that it’s properly premium and doesn’t delve into the murky world of subscriptions. That means it’s more limited than its contemporaries – you get just 18 illustrations – but you’re not forking out for something you may only dip into on occasion.

The app has other benefits, too, not least a beautiful design that makes it feel like the most tactile offering on the platform. The illustrations sit within a flip book of virtual stiff card pages. As you color, sound effects mimic real-world tools, which is especially mesmerizing if you’re using a stylus. 

There is one minor issue, in the illustrations not scaling as well as they might when you zoom in – they get a bit blurry. But otherwise, this is a wonderful premium take on iPad coloring.

Reeder 4 ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Reeder 4 is a premium RSS client. You subscribe to website feeds, which can be browsed individually or as a whole, ensuring you never miss an article from favorite sources.

Although you can opt to view the original web pages, you’re better off with Reeder’s own reader, which removes cruft, leaving you with just text and images. For sites that only provide synopses, entire articles can be loaded with a touch of a button. There’s also a ‘Bionic Reading’ mode can also be invoked, emboldening specific letters in words to slow you down, so you take in more of the text.

Despite the odd flub (a default theme that very much needs the ‘increase contrast’ option on; finicky animations), Reeder remains ahead of the pack. It’s a must-buy if you want a better way to take in news and other articles on your iPad.

David Bowie is… ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

David Bowie is… takes 2013’s blockbuster Bowie exhibition and stuffs it inside of your iPad as an AR experience.

Curated by theme rather than chronologically, the exhibition is a set of interactive scenes, ‘projected’ onto your desktop. Optional narration by Gary Oldman adds backstory as you examine lyrics, costumes and videos, exploring the life of a music icon.

On iPad, David Bowie is… works especially well. The screen’s squarer aspect ratio makes examining content less awkward than on iPhone, and the larger display lets everything shine. The only thing that might give you pause is the price, but for far less than a ticket to the original exhibition, you get unlimited access to all the goodies – including dozens of songs and videos – without having to peer over other people’s shoulders.

Bloom: 10 Worlds ($7.99/£7.99/AU$12.99)

Bloom: 10 Worlds is the follow-up to 2008’s Bloom, which never made it to iPad. That app had you tap the screen to simultaneously play notes and create spots of color. The former looped and slowly evolved; the latter disappeared into the background like ripples in a pond.

10 Worlds expands this premise out from a ‘single’ into a full album. There are 10 takes on the format to enjoy, each with its own visuals and audio. The visuals in particular have been significantly improved from the original Bloom, replacing that app’s hard geometric forms with a more painterly approach.

However, it’s the intriguing mix of instrument, album, and art that still shines through. The result is an essential addition to iPad, perfectly complementing existing Eno/Chilvers collaborations Scape and Reflection . 

Shepard Fairey AR - Damaged (US$4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Shepard Fairey AR - Damaged takes a warehouse-sized art exhibit and transforms it into a virtual space. This means instead of getting a digital book, where you swipe between stills, you instead experience the context and atmospherics of the original show, dragging the screen to move, or actually walking around in AR, adjusting your view on the basis of where you hold your iPad.

Fairey – creator of the iconic ‘Hope’ image of Barack Obama – is on fine form here, exploring issues relating to social media, celebrity, and the notion of constructing your own reality. Optionally, his narrative can accompany your journey around his work, adding extra insight. But however you check out Damaged, it proves itself to be the finest example of a virtual gallery on mobile, looking to the future rather than the past.

Tweetbot 5 (US$4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Tweetbot 5 is a premium Twitter client. Unlike Twitter’s own client, which is determined to present tweets as it sees fit, Tweetbot lists tweets in order, omits ads, and doesn’t clutter up your mentions feed with notifications about retweets and likes. There’s a night mode, for tweeting in the dark, iCloud sync across devices for keeping your place, and nice sound effects that make the app feel alive.

On iPad, the app of course supports Split View and Slide Over, but it also has its own built-in column view. This means if you’re the kind of person who lives on Twitter, you can, for example, simultaneously scroll through your feed in the main pane, while chatting with people via direct messages in another. Top stuff for power users – or anyone who wants to avoid social network noise.

Chunky Comic Reader (free or $3.99/£3.99/AU$4.49)

There's a miniature revolution taking place in digital comics. Echoing the music industry some years ago, more publishers are cottoning on to readers very much liking DRM-free content. With that in mind, you now need a decent iPad reader for your PDFs and CBRs, rather than whatever iffy reading experience is welded to a storefront.

Chunky is the best comic-reader on iPad. The interface is simple but customisable. If you want rid of transitions, they're gone. Tinted pages can be brightened. And smart upscaling makes low-res comics look good.

Paying the one-off 'pro' IAP enables you to connect to Mac or Windows shared folders or FTP. Downloading comics then takes seconds, and the app will happily bring over folders full of images and convert them on-the-fly into readable digital publications.

Our favorite iPad apps for cooking, relaxing, de-stressing and keeping fit.

Noir ($2.99/£2.49/AU$4.49)

Noir is a Safari extension that wants to protect your eyes when you browse the internet at night – or just don’t want to be dazzled during the day. It does this by adding a dark mode to any website you visit when iPadOS 15’s Dark Mode is active, or by enabling you to trigger Noir whenever you like.

The extension comes with several built-in styles, along with further options to tweak what you see, for example by dimming images on the page. Wisely, it lets you apply specific settings to individual websites, if one doesn’t happen to play well with the defaults.

This sense of polish and the smattering of control set Noir apart from the competition. Sure, there are free alternatives to Noir on the App Store, but the quality gulf between these products is like day and night.

Portal (free + various IAP)

Portal is an ambient noise/relaxation app that wants to take your mind somewhere else - and in a more literal sense than most. Instead of merely providing audio, Portal has you virtually travel to a range of serene locations. Each is a combination of video loop and 3D soundscape - a window to a tiny world designed to help you focus, relax, and sleep.

The free app gives you a slice of the full experience, with six portals to jump through. Pay the IAP and that number rises to over 40. On the larger screen of an iPad - and with headphones on - the experience is hypnotic.

It’s configurable, too, enabling you to overlay a clock, run a focus timer, and display the task you’re trying to concentrate on. The only thing you’ll wish when it’s running is that your iPad’s screen was the size of an actual window.

Streaks Workout ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Streaks Workout is a personal trainer squeezed into your iPad. But unlike many of its contemporaries, Streaks doesn’t make assumptions about your skill level and environment. You don’t need any equipment, and the app is flexible enough to fit around your capabilities and interests.

To rapidly kick things off, you can select exercises to use within random workouts, and choose from one of four timers. These range from the reasonable six-minute Quick to the arduous half-hour Extreme. As you exercise, the app records how you do, building up a log of your efforts.

At any point, you can create your own custom exercises, making the app truly yours. And with data syncing across the cloud, there’s no excuse for not working up a sweat, since Streaks can always be with you on iPad, iPhone, Apple TV, and Apple Watch .

Cosm ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Cosm is a mash-up of mental wellness aid and ambient instrument. Fire up a new session, prod the screen, and a calming note will play. Tap a few more times, and you’ll soon realize you’ve composed a custom loop to serenade you into the infinite.

So far, so Brian Eno’s Bloom – but Cosm takes things further. You get control over tuning, volume, and instrumentation. Most importantly, your compositions can be saved, whereupon the app encourages you to add a written note about how you feel.

The idea is to create a kind of journal that’s driven in part by the compositions you make – or at least to make compositions that give you a boost when you later return to them. Whether or not you’re a fan of Eno’s iPad apps, Cosm is well worth investigating.

Paprika ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Paprika is ideal for people who live in the kitchen. Whereas other cooking apps are content to serve up some recipes and a shopping list, Paprika is a full-fledged scrapbook and meal planner you can use for every aspect of your culinary world.

Recipes can be added manually or snipped from favorite websites. Anything added to the app can be adjusted, if you decide you’ve figured out a way to improve the dish or preparation methods, or fancy adding some photos. Beyond that, there’s an ingredients tracker, meal planner (with Calendar integration), menu creator, and the means to print recipes.

It’s not as visually flashy as the likes of Kitchen Stories and Tasty, but Paprika feels like the best bet for anyone whose iPad spends almost as much time in the kitchen as they do.

Streaks (US$4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Streaks is habit-forming – in a good way. It’s effectively a to-do manager that focuses on what you want to do in your life – and bad habits you want to eradicate.

To get started, you create tasks, assign icons, and define durations. The app’s flexible regarding how often tasks should be done; and you can create time-based ones (whereupon the app temporarily becomes a timer), those that interact with Apple’s Health app, and ‘negative’ ones you don’t want to ‘complete’. Streaks then tracks your progress in handy graph form.

The app’s iPhone origins are obvious, not least in the main display that’s optimized for six tasks and therefore looks comical on iPad. But it’s nonetheless great to have this superb app in native form on Apple’s tablet, and iCloud sync ensures any changes you make are accessible across all your Apple gear.

CARROT Fit ($3.99/£3.99/AU$4.49)

CARROT Fit is the answer if a more sensible exercise app just isn’t doing it for you. Like CARROT Weather, this fitness tool is helmed by a snarky, sarcastic AI. Here, she comes across like the deranged offspring of HAL 9000 and a personal trainer. To wit, she’ll threaten, ridicule and bribe you, in order to “prevent your body from blimping up.”

The actual exercise bit is, broadly speaking, conventional, in that you partake in recognizable routines. But even there, CARROT Fit has a very distinct character, referring to push-ups as ‘Kowtows to Cthulhu,’ and subtly renaming the seven-minute workout ‘7 Minutes in Hell.’ Still, you’ll likely need some humor when sitting on the floor in a sweaty heap after a few minutes of exercise, and CARROT Fit has that over its straight-laced contemporaries.

White Noise+ (free + US$2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 IAP)

White Noise+ is a sound machine designed to reduce distractions by way of ambient noise. Many apps in this space are a bit new age and flowery, and quite a few are, frankly, rubbish. Fortunately, White Noise+ is none of those things, instead providing a thoroughly modern, tactile take on noise generation.

The app’s based around a grid akin to smart drums in GarageBand. Here, you get 16 slots, into which you drag icons that represent different sounds. Those toward the top play more loudly, and those toward the right have more complex loops. Your mixes can be saved, and sleep timers and alarms are available if you want to use White Noise+ for meditation sessions – or for waking you up should you doze off.

You get a handful of sounds to play with for free, but the full set requires a one-off IAP. Given the quality of the app, it’s well worth the outlay.

Our favorite iPad apps, learning tools and games for toddlers and children.

Pok Pok Playroom (free + IAP)

Pok Pok Playroom is a set of handcrafted toys aimed at young children between the ages of two and six. Echoing real-world play, each of the app’s individual playrooms is designed to foster experimentation and exploration. This is an app about discovery, not stress – there are no timers, and all play is open-ended.

From a visual standpoint, Pok Pok Playroom is a joy, with colorful shapes reminiscent of sleek cut-outs. The interface is suitable for youngsters, whether they’re painting a picture, playing with musical shapes and objects, or exploring rooms in a doll house or a virtual town that features rivers, emergency vehicles and little ducks you can drag about.

The subscription might grate, but the production’s wholesome nature makes it worth checking out with your children – at least for a month or two.

Universe in a Nutshell ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)

Universe in a Nutshell is one of those educational apps aimed at kids that’s nonetheless a joy to explore as a grown-up. It’s designed to help you discover your place in the universe - at least in terms of your relative size to a bunch of other objects. This occurs by way of you pinching to zoom in and out, all the way up to the size of the observable universe and way down to the Planck length.

Each object within the app is illustrated in a bright, vibrant, cartoonish style. Tap on one and you’ll get basic facts about what you’re looking at, giving you insight on everything from dinosaurs to black holes. In all, over 250 objects are included, in what amounts to the most joyfully tactile size comparison chart you’re ever likely to see.

Thinkrolls Space ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Thinkrolls Space continues the great tradition of the Thinkrolls series, giving young children a play experience that marries dexterity tests and puzzle-solving logic. Here, over 200 mazes are set across seven unique planets, and the player is tasked with getting trundling protagonists to the exit. As ever, there are all kinds of hazards in the way.

Given that this game is set in space, there’s a sci-fi/fantasy vibe to proceedings. Plasma fields, teleporters, and vanishing rainbow bridges must be dealt with, along with a cast of oddball aliens, including sleeping robots and cheese monsters that helpfully devour tunnels of moon cheese.

This iPad app has no timers, no IAP, and its challenges are specifically designed for different skill levels, making it a good bet for families with kids of different ages. Top stuff all round, then. (Pun intended.)

Pango Musical March ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)

Pango Musical March is arguably not at the educational end of the children’s apps on our list. However, it is a lot of fun for any kid with a musical bent – or who just loves watching colorful cartoon critters do their bidding.

On selecting a musical style (or all four at once), a bar with instruments appears at the foot of the screen. Drag one up to an empty spot and a band member starts to play and march. Add to the musical menagerie for a suitably disciplined slice of marching band goodness – or a barely listenable cacophony.

With no ads, time limits, nor competitive elements, this is a playful and relaxing app for younger children to experiment with, and the visuals look superb on the iPad’s large display.

Sago Mini Village ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Sago Mini Village was reportedly inspired by Minecraft , but designed very much with young children in mind. Therefore, you’re still building your own world from blocks, but these are a bit chunkier than Minecraft’s, and this is a resolutely solo experience.

It’s colorful fare, as you’d expect from a Sago Mini title, set in a fantasy land populated by gnomes. The more buildings that are constructed, the more gnomes move in – and then they start exploring and interacting. There are plenty of entertaining animations and fun surprises throughout.

With offline support and no IAPs, Sago Mini Village is ideal fodder for any young child who loves to build, during those times when it’s not possible to litter your real-world environment with piles of plastic bricks.

Pango Paper Color ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Pango Paper Color is akin to coloring in a living world of origami. Across four scenes, including a forest and a farm, you see objects constructed before your very eyes. You then tap to add colors, whereupon the objects spring to life. Everything looks superb on the iPad’s large display.

Although primarily designed for children, Pango Paper Color is a really nice experience for all kinds of iPad user. Fans of animation will appreciate the effort that’s gone into it; or if you just want something different to relax with, it fits the bill.

For kids, though, this one should really hit home. They can learn to mix colors, photograph and share their scene; and when they’re done coloring, they can fold up all that virtual paper – and then start all over again!

Sizzle & Stew ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Sizzle & Stew shows why young children – along with sloths and llamas – need supervision in the kitchen. Your kid helps the furry duo concoct culinary ‘delights’ that would give a Michelin Star chef chills.

Creating dishes involves partaking in all manner of havoc in the kitchen. Want to microwave a carrot into oblivion? Go for it. Stick broccoli in the oven until it’s unrecognizable? Sure. In the washing machine, too? That’s even tastier. (Just as well, then, that these beasts will eat anything .)

With its absurdist, open-ended, risk-free nature, Sizzle & Stew is bound to appeal to kids. Even better, on iPad a simultaneous two-player split-screen mode has room to breathe, so you can pit your skills against your kid’s – shortly before finding out neither of you’s likely to get a TV chef gig.

Toca Life: Office ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Toca Life: Office gives your kids a chance to play out what they imagine their working parents get up to all day – albeit in exciting environments likely more colorful and interesting than the real thing.

For young children, there’s plenty of fun to be had simply in moving the little figures about, and poking backgrounds to see what happens. For slightly older kids, exploration can prove rewarding in other ways – there’s a secret exit from the jail, a working copy machine in the office, and a cafe where you can merrily experiment with what’s on the menu.

Neatly, there’s even a recording feature, so kids can get creative and act out a scene, which can then be shared with friends. In all, this is another superb Toca Boca creation that ticks all the right boxes.

Bandimal ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Bandimal is a music toy for the rest of us. Actually, its App Store description states it’s a music composer for kids, but ignore that because Bandimal is great fun for everyone.

It offers three slots into which you swipe an animal. A quick tap opens a dotted grid, on to which you assign notes by prodding the dots. These trigger loops when the playhead moves over them, and there are no wrong choices.

There’s a drum track too, along with some basic effects and a speed dial. And as you’re composing, your little menagerie will bop to the beat, with animation that’s so much fun it’s sure to make any cartoonists in the vicinity a touch envious.

You might avoid Bandimal because you’re not a musician. Don’t. This app’s only to be avoided if you hate fun.

Zen Studio (free + IAP)

Zen Studio is a unique, beautifully conceived painting and coloring app. Instead of giving you a blank canvas for free-form scribbling, Zen Studio opts for a triangular grid. Tap spaces and they fill with your selected color as a note plays. This combination of coloring and ad-hoc melody proves very relaxing – for children and adults alike.

In its free version, this is an entertaining app, but it’s worth grabbing the main $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99 IAP. This lets you save unlimited drawings (rather than just eight), and unlocks white paint, which acts as an eraser on compositions with white backgrounds.

It also provides access to a slew of tutorials. These have you build up a picture by coloring inside stencils, which even a two-year-old should be able to cope with – and then subsequently scrawl over when the stencils disappear.

Little Digits ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Little Digits is a new spin on finger counting, making use of the iPad’s large screen, and its ability to recognize loads of fingers pressing down at once.

The app’s most basic mode responds to how many fingers are touching the screen. Use a single digit, and the app chirps ONE! while a grinning one-shaped monster jigs about. Add another finger and the one is replaced by a furry two. You get the idea.

Beyond this, the app offers some basic training in number ordering, addition and subtraction, making it a great learning tool for young children.

But the smartest feature may well be multiple language support and recording. This means you can use the app to learn to count in anything from French to Swedish, and record custom prompts if your own language isn’t supported.

Metamorphabet ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

You're probably dead inside if you sit down with Metamorphabet and it doesn't raise a smile — doubly so if you use it alongside a tiny human. The app takes you through all the letters of the alphabet, which contort and animate into all kinds of shapes. It suitably starts with A, which when prodded grows antlers, transforms into an arch, and then goes for an amble. It's adorable.

The app's surreal, playful nature never lets up, and any doubts you might have regarding certain scenes — such as floaty clouds representing 'daydream' in a manner that doesn't really work — evaporate when you see tiny fingers and thumbs carefully pawing at the iPad's glass while young eyes remain utterly transfixed.

Toca Nature ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

On opening Toca Nature , you find yourself staring at a slab of land floating in the void. After selecting relevant icons, a drag of a finger is all it takes to raise mountains or dig deep gullies for rivers and lakes.

Finishing touches to your tiny landscape can then be made by tapping to plant trees. Wait for a bit and a little ecosystem takes shape, deers darting about glades, and fish swimming in the water. Using the magnifying glass, you can zoom into and explore this little world and feed its various inhabitants.

Although designed primarily for kids, Toca Nature is a genuinely enjoyable experience whatever your age.

The one big negative is that it starts from scratch every time — some save states would be nice, so each family member could have their own space to tend to and explore. Still, blank canvases keep everything fresh, and building a tiny nature reserve never really gets old.

Foldify Dinosaurs ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

We're big fans of the Foldify apps, which enable people to fashion and customise little 3D characters on an iPad, before printing them out and making them for real. This mix of digital painting, sharing (models can be browsed, uploaded and rated) and crafting a physical object is exciting in a world where people spend so much time glued to virtual content on screens.

But it's Foldify Dinosaurs that makes this list because, well, dinosaurs. Who wouldn't be thrilled at the prospect of making a magenta T-Rex with a natty moustache? Should that person exist, we don't want to meet them.

Our favorite iPad apps for sampling, being a DJ, making music and listening to podcasts.

StaffPad ($89.99/£79.99/AU$139.99)

StaffPad reimagines traditional music composition on an iPad, transforming the screen into a living intelligent canvas. You’ll need an Apple Pencil, and also to spend a little time learning the notation StaffPad expects. But once you grasp that, lines and flicks are instantly transformed into beautifully typeset notation that can be edited, printed and shared.

The app also includes a powerful playback engine. Impressive banks of samples combined with high-quality effects can almost trick you into thinking you’re sitting before an orchestra as your work is performed.

Other niceties – such as the means to import audio and to export your compositions as MIDI for working on in other music apps – round out a quality product that’s worth the admittedly (for iPad apps, at least) hefty price tag.

Animoog Z Synthesizer (free + $19.99/£17.99/AU$30.99)

Animoog Z is the follow-up to hit iPad synth app Animoog. Like its predecessor, this combines gorgeous Moog sounds with a touch-friendly interface that lets you use gestures to add expression to your compositions. The presets are excellent, and even if you don’t pay for the full version, there’s fun to be had.

With that IAP, though, a world of audio experimentation opens up. You can dig into screens full of dials and effects, sculpting your own sonic universes and navigating through three axes of sound.

It looks superb, visualizing audio in captivating fashion. And with support for MIDI and AUv3, Animoog Z can be used as part of the wider iPad audio ecosystem, shifting it from stunning standalone to a vital component of a modern home synth set-up.

Cs: Music Player ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49)

Cs: Music Player is a throwback, in the best possible way. It’s like a modern incarnation of Apple’s Music app – before the Apple Music service sidelined your own music collection. Cs dispenses with radio stations and algorithmic feeds, instead concentrating solely on your music library.

This works best on iPad in ‘grid view’, with cover artwork filling the display. But you can opt for ‘list view’ instead, and adjust the sort order of artists, songs, albums and playlists. When listening, a swipe on the mini player skips between tracks; and if you want to go fully old-school, you can even block Apple Music tracks stored in the cloud and only display music stored on your iPad. For the money, Cs is a first-rate buy, however you use it.

SongKit ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

SongKit is a powerful notepad for songwriters. When jotting down something from scratch, you can quickly combine lyrics and chord charts/tab, along with defining your song’s structure. Alternatively, you can share a song you’ve found in Safari to SongKit and the app will attempt to format it. Mostly, minimal editing is required to tidy up SongKit’s efforts.

That alone would sell the app for many people, but SongKit is blessed with many more useful features. Songs can be transposed in an instant. As you’re writing, the app can suggest chords; and when you’re learning or gigging, autoscroll can ensure you get through a song without forgetting the words and chords.

There’s also export functionality, so you can share your next chart-topper as a beautifully rendered PDF. It’s all quite involved, but SongKit is a rare app that never plays a bum note.

Jamm Pro ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

Jamm Pro sits apart from other music-making apps on iPad. Whereas most ape real-world kit, Jamm Pro is a unique instrument in and of itself - and a hugely powerful one for working with samples.

It initially looks like a bewildering grid of buttons, and you’re best off starting with one of the included sound sets, so you can slowly master the app. As you poke around, you’ll discover the app’s mix of raw power and tactile controls that unleash loads of potential, whether you’re scribbling across the screen to manipulate samples, or sculpting a live performance.

This isn’t an easy app to grasp – the lack of immediacy may be off-putting, and even a help overlay doesn’t stop your initial time with the app feeling overwhelming. But stick with it, and Jamm Pro will reveal itself as a deep, powerful, touch-first music-making tool.

AudioKit Hey Metronome ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

AudioKit Hey Metronome is a bit different from most iPad apps for music-making, in that it’s designed to help you work on songs using real instruments. Specifically – as its name likely suggests – it’s all about keeping you in time, as you write something new or work on nailing an existing song.

However, there’s also the ‘hey’ bit; like Siri, this is a metronome you can bark orders at. That might seem an odd idea, but it’s great to have a hands-free metronome when you’re holding your instrument.

This app offers more than just 4/4 beeps, too. Along with a range of time signatures and drum sounds, you can construct playlists that echo your current set – or select from a range of popular tracks, when you fancy jamming along to someone else’s tune.

AudioKit L7 – Live Looper ($19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99)

AudioKit L7 – Live Looper is an audio recorder inspired by Roland’s Boss RC-505 Loop Station. You record short snippets of audio that continue to loop, and gradually build a soundscape – a technique often used by beatboxers and guitarists to impressive effect.

As an iPad app, AudioKit L7 is robbed of some portability – you won’t hold an iPad like a mic and make mouth sounds into it. However, what you do get is a bigger surface on which to tinker with any noises you record.

The app also enables you to mix in imported audio and add effects, resulting in a playground for creativity. It’s a different take on music making, but one that’s ideal for jobbing musicians looking for new ways to be inspired, or newcomers after a user-friendly entry point.

AudioKit FM Player 2 ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

AudioKit FM Player 2 is an open-source iPad synth that’ll beam you back to the 1980s. Its many and varied presets are based on over 150 samples, and bathe your ears in classic sounds from the likes of Yamaha’s DX7 and TX81Z.

A slew of knobs to twiddle, along with an arpeggiator and 16-step sequencer, give you plenty of scope for shaping sound. This is the kind of synth where you can merrily hold down a single key, fiddle with settings, and suddenly realize half an hour’s zoomed by.

The app plays nicely with the iPadOS music ecosystem, too. It will work with MIDI keyboards, and also other music apps – in fact, AUv3 support means the entire interface can be loaded into GarageBand, whenever you fancy getting your Kraftwerk on.

NanoStudio 2 ($24.99/£23.99/AU$38.99)

NanoStudio 2 is the successor to NanoStudio, an iPhone app that let musicians bash out songs on iPhones before GarageBand for iOS was a twinkle in Apple’s eye. Now less ‘nano’ (being iPad-only), the follow-up is a remarkably powerful tool for recording, sampling, editing, and mixing.

The app was six years in the making – and it shows. Built-in synth Obsidian is among the best on iOS, and is hugely versatile in the noises it can create. Drum machine Slate adds rhythm, and if that’s not enough, NanoStudio 2 lets you effortlessly incorporate Audio Units like Poison-202 and Minimoog Model D .

There is an electronic bent to NanoStudio 2, so it’s not ideally suited to people into more traditional sounds. Otherwise, this usable, feature-rich music production environment is a must-have for iPad musicians.

djay (free + $4.99/£4.49/AU$7.49 monthly)

djay is a full-featured DJ solution for iOS. You get a two-deck mode with crossfader, looping, and effects for free, but splash out on the pro subscription and you’re instantly equipped with enough DJ power to keep you spinning decks into the small hours.

You get a two-deck view with flanking libraries – and a four-deck view when two isn’t enough. There’s VJ mixing when you fancy adding some video, support for a slew of controllers, and over 1GB of samples you can fire off to stamp your personal style over whatever’s blasting from the local sound system.

Naturally, it’s total overkill (albeit fun total overkill) for the typical home user; but if you’re a pro DJ armed with an external controller, it may well be enough to chuck all that traditional kit on eBay.

Ferrite Recording Studio (free or $28.99/£28.99/AU$46.99)

Ferrite Recording Studio at first looks like a souped-up voice memos app, but beneath lies a powerful multi-track editor, so if you’re armed with an iPad, the app and some time, you can create your own podcast.

For free, there are limitations: an hour of recording, ten-minute projects and three tracks. Go Pro and Ferrite gives desktop editors a run for their money: 32 tracks, projects up to a day long, and recording time limited only by the space on your iPad.

The pro version adds further handy tools for improving recordings, such as effects, auto-leveling, MP3 chapters and dead air removal, bt the most impressive thing is how this all comes together. Ferrite might be powerful, but it’s also extremely usable. It therefore comes highly recommended if you’ve any interest in multi-track voice recording projects.

Audiobus 3 ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

There are so many amazing music-making apps on iPad that it’s hard to choose between them. With Audiobus 3 , you sort of don’t have to, because it acts as a kind of behind-the-scenes plumbing.

Virtual cabling might not sound sexy, but it hugely boosts creative potential. You can send live audio or MIDI data between apps and through effects, mix the various channels, and then send the entire output to the likes of GarageBand.

Much of these features are new to Audiobus 3, and this latest update also adds Audio Unit support, enabling you to open some synths and effects directly in the app.

With support for over 900 iOS products in all, Audiobus 3 is an essential buy for anyone serious about creating music on an iPad.

Poison-202 ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

So, you’ve picked up an iPad synth to compose music, play live, or bound about like a maniac, pretending you're on stage at Glastonbury. Fortunately, Poison-202 is ideal for all such sets of circumstances.

The moody black and red graphic design is very 1990s, but it's Poison-202's sounds that hurl you back to the halcyon days of electronic music. Aficionados of The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers and Orbital will be overjoyed at the familiar (and brilliant) sounds you can conjure up simply by selecting presets and prodding a few keys.

And if you're not satisfied by the creator's (frankly awesome) sound design smarts (in which case, we glare at you with the menace of a thousand Keith Flints), all manner of sliders and dials enable you to create your own wall-wobbling bass and ear-searing leads.

There are iPad synths that have more ambition, and many are more authentic to classic hardware; but few are more fun .

Fugue Machine ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

This music app is inspired by layered composition techniques used in some classical music. You tap out notes on a piano roll, and can then have up to four playheads simultaneously interpret your notes, each using unique speeds, directions and transpositions. For the amateur, Fugue Machine is intuitive and mesmerising, not least because of how easy it is to create something that sounds gorgeous.

For pros, it's a must-have, not least due to MIDI output support for driving external software. It took us mere seconds to have Fugue Machine working with Animoog's voices, and the result ruined our productivity for an entire morning.

(Unless you count composing beautiful music when you should be doing something else as 'being productive'. In which case, we salute you.)

Our favorite iPad apps for writing, email, editing PDFs, spreadsheets, coding and file management.

iA Writer ($49.99/£44.99/AU$79.99)

iA Writer is a text editor that initially resembles a typewriter – albeit one where you can edit what you’ve previously written. Rather than fiddling with fonts and styles, it’s just you and your text. This provides space for thinking and a canvas that lacks distractions.

Wisely, the app builds on that foundation with customization to suit a range of writing styles. You can optionally activate word count, focus mode, and style checking that helps you rid writing of cliches and redundancies. A two-pane view lets you quickly preview rendered Markdown. A Lightning menu provides fast access to favorite commands. And wikilinks let you build a web of documents that connect multiple thoughts and ideas. 

Finished copy can be exported to HTML, Word, PDF, WordPress or Medium for further editing and design. In all, it’s a must-have for any writer keen to focus on what really matters.

PageTurn Universal (free + $3.99/£3.49/AU$5.99)

PageTurn Universal is a curious beast: a PDF document reader that doesn’t want you using your hands to switch pages – instead, you use your face. Specifically, you move your lips from side to side to turn the page, or wink in a somewhat exaggerated manner.

You might question why you’d ever want to do such a thing, but it’s really handy for musicians who don’t want to remove their hands from instruments when working with sheet music or guitar tab. A moment’s thought should suggest other use-cases as well.

Smartly, the app is configurable. You can invert the control direction and adjust the turn threshold and time between page turns. The only downside: get used to the app and you’ll end up gurning at a PDF if you accidentally open it in the wrong app.

Moleskine Journey ($4.99/£3.99/AU$6.49 per month)

Moleskine Journey is an organizational tool pitched at “creative minds,” “independent workers,” and “free spirits.” It blends productivity tools and wellness, looking after you whether you’re at work or trying to achieve personal goals.

The app can pull in events from your Apple calendar data, and augment them with imagery, links, and PDFs. A task-based to-do list is included, along with a project manager, for grouping complex requirements by topic. Under My Day, you see your day’s schedule, along with a food diary, and a custom habits log.

On iPad, Moleskine Journey isn’t quite as streamlined as on iPhone, in part due to a dual-pane view. But the flip-side of that is gaining access to a lot more information at once. Regardless, it’s an interesting take on personal organization that successfully caters to work and play.

Textastic Code Editor 8 ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

Textastic is a text editor for coders. It’s tasteful and minimal, yet packed full of features for optimizing workflow.

When using just an iPad, the custom keyboard row provides fast access to a range of characters. If you’ve got a physical keyboard, you can configure keyboard shortcuts for important actions. Fonts can be customized, and new themes selected.

The built-in file transfer manager enables you to access documents stored remotely; and although Textastic cannot be used as a Files location, you can get at local content via On My iPad. Want to go old school? Try printing off your code on paper.

As ever, there are limitations to an iPad coding editor, meaning you’re unlikely to create web pages or apps from scratch using the app, but it’s ideal for making edits when on the move – or on the sofa.

Cardhop ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

Cardhop reimagines the Contacts app – in a manner that makes it far more usable and useful. It uses existing iCloud data (and can integrate other address books), but rethinks how you get to data and actions.

A powerful search field utilizes natural language. This can be used to get at data that’s otherwise buried deep – ‘phone John’ or ‘FaceTime Jane’ – or to rapidly add new contacts by typing in a few of their details prior to tapping a button.

When browsing, notes are always accessible – handy if you use that field. There’s a tab specifically for birthdays, and another for recently accessed contacts – and that syncs across iCloud. Also, tap a piece of data in a card, and an action (like a call or email) isn’t immediately triggered – instead, you get a pop-up with options. Every detail feels considered and polished.

FE File Explorer Pro ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

FE File Explorer Pro plugs a hole in iPad file management – namely, getting at things that aren’t stored on your iPad or on iCloud. The usable, Apple-like interface makes it a cinch to connect to, explore, and preview or download your files, whether they’re on a PC or Mac, a network drive, or on remote cloud services other than Apple’s.

There’s drag-and-drop awareness, the means to flag files as favorites, and password support if you want your documents locked down. Perhaps best of all for people who work a lot on their iPads, FE File Explorer Pro integrates directly into Apple’s Files. Activate it as a location, and Apple’s app then gains seamless access to a huge range of storage options that are otherwise out of reach. Top stuff.

Memento: Modern Reminders ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)

Memento: Modern Reminders is an alternative to the Apple Reminders app. It uses the same database, meaning you can at any point switch between the two apps; the main reason for splashing out some cash on Memento is speed – the app just makes it much easier to do stuff.

For example, when creating or editing a reminder, a smart keyboard row gives you speedy access to time and location alerts. The former provides useful options like ‘this evening’ and ‘tomorrow morning’.

Beyond that, there’s a Reminders feed that shows everything in a single scrolling pane, a tab for reminders with time alerts (‘For You’), powerful notifications management, and a visual design that looks far more like something Apple would create than Apple’s own app.

PDF Expert by Readdle ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

On the Mac, PDF Expert by Readdle is a friendly, efficient, usable PDF editor. If anything, the app’s often even better on iPad.

You can grab PDFs from iCloud or Dropbox. Pages can be rearranged by drag-and-drop, and you can add or extract pages with a few taps. Adding pages from another document sadly remains beyond the app, but you can merge two PDFs in its file manager.

As a reader, PDF Expert fares well, ably dealing with large PDFs, and the text-to-speech mode can read documents at a speed of your choosing. Similarly, the app makes short work of annotations, document signing, and outline editing.

Buy the ‘Edit PDF’ IAP ($9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99 on top of the original price) and you can directly update text, redact passages, and replace images. You’re obviously a little limited by a document’s existing fonts and layout, but this functionality is great if you spot a glaring error while checking a vital PDF on your iPad.

Our favorite iPad apps for shooting and editing photos and videos and adding filters.

LumaFusion ($29.99/£25.99/AU$46.99)

LumaFusion plugs a Final Cut Pro-shaped gap in the mobile app ecosystem, providing desktop-quality video editing on your iPad. You get six video/audio tracks and a further six audio-only tracks, along with a slew of transitions. The interface on iPad is flexible and fluid, making it a cinch to edit 4K footage on the go. And when you’re back at your desk, you can opt to place your preview on an external display.

The app is packed with audio and visual effects, along with a robust titler. It understands modern pro workflows, with version 3 adding support for third-party plug-ins, ProRes and direct editing from external USB-C drives. The last of those is vital with the increasing size of media files and the inability to expand internal iPad storage. In all, LumaFusion is superb and has a bargain price-tag for a desktop-grade product.

Halide ($11.99/£11.99/AU$19.49 per year)

Halide has long been known as a first-rate iPhone camera app. It combines a refined, intuitive interface with high-end features, which should please photographers wanting to get more out of their iPhone’s camera. On iPad, it does much the same – but this isn’t just a blown-up iPhone app.

The design has been rethought for the bigger screen, placing key controls near to your thumbs. A manual focus strip sits along the bottom edge, but with a large swipe area. An optional Pro View shrinks the viewfinder to sit within your field of vision.

Naturally, using the app won’t stop you from being seen as one of those people who shoots photos with a tablet. But when your camera app is this good, you won’t care – especially if you’ve got a recent iPad Pro, which can do surprisingly fancy macro-like tricks .

Pixelmator Photo ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Pixelmator Photo is an iPad app designed to make your photos better. Its machine learning button, trained on 20 million pro photos, corrects lighting, exposure and shadows with a tap. The results are pleasing and natural compared to the over-saturated fake-looking fare produced by rival apps.

Film-like filters, together with a sidebar of buttons and sliders, let you unlock your creative and experimental side, and the tools within the sidebar are befitting of pricey desktop-grade software.

But here, too, efficiency is key. There’s direct integration with Files and Photos, and edits are saved in non-destructive fashion, so they can later be reverted. Batch editing lets you edit an entire photoshoot with just a few taps. And pictures can be resized during export.

Even if you only use the machine learning button, Pixelmator Photo’s low price makes it a steal. But once you’ve delved into the app’s other controls, you’ll be hooked.

Darkroom (free or $9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

Darkroom is a photo editor for iPad. On a device that’s not exactly short of photo editors, that might not excite you, but Darkroom differentiates itself from the crowd.

Open the app and it immediately presents your existing images. Tap one and you’re ready to edit. Tap a tool and a sidebar slides in, providing fast access to a superb range of tools for cropping and making adjustments. Throw some IAP at Darkroom, and these expand into even more professional territory by way of curves and color-correction tools.

None of that probably sounds all that different, but Darkroom’s no-nonsense approach, sleek interface and deep integration with iOS/iPadOS set it apart. It’s user-friendly and straightforward, yet powerful, and feels like something Apple at its very best might have created itself.

Glitch Art Studio (free + $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99 IAP)

Glitch Art Studio is an effects app that aims to make even dull photos and videos look interesting. The filters are based around glitches and animated distortion, and can be edited to the point you can barely tell what the subject was.

Depending on whether you’re in it for speed or control, you can delve into presets or a bunch of individual menus respectively. Either way, you’ll end up concocting something resembling the display of a barely working old television, or some kind of deranged hallucinogenic episode.

On iPad, the larger canvas lets you fully appreciate the effects on offer – which are deeply impressive. If you’re fed up with filters that ape old paintings, use Glitch Studio to bring your creative photographic endeavors kicking and screaming into the (relatively) modern era.

VideoGrade (US$5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99)

VideoGrade is a color-grading app for video, giving you a taste of Hollywood on your iPad.

It’s a powerful app, but one that’s nonetheless straightforward to use. On launch, it finds all your videos. Select one and tools are displayed at the right-hand side of the screen. Open a menu, drag a slider, and changes are made instantly. Any tool used gets a handy green dot next to its name, helping you keep track of complex adjustments.

Filters (color changes, levels, pixelation and so on) are applied live, and a single tap fires up a full preview. Combinations of settings can be saved for later reuse. Also, the app’s various presets are available as a Photos extension. That means you needn’t even delve headlong into VideoGrade itself to apply some of its magic to your favorite videos.

Retrospecs (free or US$1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Retrospecs is a photo filter app that revels in the history of computing and gaming. Rather than turning any photo or image into a tiny Picasso with a tap, it instead reimagines whatever you load as if it was on the screen of a Game Boy, Apple Mac or C64.

In fact, over 40 systems exist once you pay for the IAP (you can test Retrospecs for free with a small selection), and if that’s not enough, you can fashion your own custom emulations. For properly authentic retro output, you can edit dither modes, add glitch animations, tweak CRT effects and more.

Full support for video combined with some bonkers filters (PETSCII! Teletext!) adds scope for YouTube weirdness. But even if you only grab Retrospecs because you’ve always wondered what your face would look like on a NES, it’s worth the outlay.

Typorama (free + IAP)

Typorama is about adding text to your photos – or creating typographic designs from scratch – with a minimum of effort. Select a photo, flat color, or a stock image background, choose an output size, and you’re ready to get started.

Other apps in this space let you select fonts, but Typorama has you select designs . Enter some text, tap a design style, and what you typed is instantly transformed. If you’re not keen on what you see, tap the style again for variations.

You can add multiple type layers, and apply shadows and gradient effects to each one. There’s also a 3D rotation/perspective tool, and a selective eraser. Some features are locked in the free version and you must put up with watermarks, but there are various IAP available, including the ability to unlock everything for $5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99.

Affinity Photo ($19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99)

Affinity Photo extinguishes any lingering doubt regarding the iPad’s suitability for creative professionals. In short, it’s Serif’s impressive Mac/PC Photoshop rival, carefully reimagined for the touchscreen.

This is pro-level photo/image-editing fare, and you need the hardware to match – at least an iPad Air 2, but preferably an iPad Pro – but with the right kit, you get a huge range of features for image editing, creation and retouching.

The live filters and liquify tools are particularly impressive, responding to edits in real time. Working with a finger or Pencil is pleasingly tactile in a manner desktop equivalents can’t match.

RAW shooting/processing support, the ability to add fonts, layer isolation, and robust Files integration all cement Affinity Photo’s place among the iPad app greats. And if you become an expert, there’s even a ‘Show Touches’ option for making tutorials that other users can follow.

Artomaton - The Motion Painter (free + $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 IAP)

Artomaton - The Motion Painter is an ‘artificial intelligence artist’ – recreating photos as sketches and paintings. For free, you get a small selection of media, but pay a $2.99/£2.99/AU$4.49 IAP and you unlock the full range, including the arresting ‘Pointil’ (as in ‘lism’), scribbly crayons, and a lovely sketch/watercolor combo.

Unlike most competing apps, this one has many settings for adjusting properties, such as vignettes, stroke width, hatching angle, and color saturation.

It even works with video, and although it takes some time for Artomaton to draw all of the individual frames (just a 20-second clip will need close to 200), output with ‘Sketch&Water’ has a gorgeous scratchy hand-drawn quality.

For free, then, this is a great download; but grab that paid IAP for something really special.

Mextures ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

The iPad may not be an ideal device for shooting photos, but its large screen makes it pretty great for editing them. And Mextures is perhaps the finest app around for anyone wanting to infuse their digital snaps with character by way of textures, grunge, and gradients.

The editing process is entirely non-destructive, with you building up effects by adding layers. In each case, textures, blend modes and rotation of scanned objects can be adjusted to suit, and you can experiment without fear of edits being ‘burned in’.

Particularly interesting combinations can be saved as ‘formulas’ and shared with the Mextures community – or you can speed along your own editing by downloading one of the many formulas that already exist.

VideoGrade ($5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99)

iPad video editors tend to have a bunch of effects and filters lurking within, but with VideoGrade you can go full-on Hollywood. On launch, the app helpfully rifles through your albums, making it easy to find your videos. Load one and you get access to a whopping 13 colour-grading and repair tools.

Despite the evident power VideoGrade offers, the interface is remarkably straightforward. Select a tool (such as Vibrance, Brightness or Tint), choose a setting, and drag to make a change. Drag up before moving your finger left or right to make subtler adjustments.

Smartly, any tool already used gets a little green dash beneath, and you can go back and change or remove edits at any point.

All filters are applied live to the currently shown frame, and you can also tap a button to view a preview of how your entire exported video will look. Want to compare your edit with the original video? Horizontal and vertical split-views are available at the tap of a button. Usefully, favorite filter combinations can be stored and reused, and videos can be queued rather than laboriously rendered individually.

Snapseed (free)

Apple's Photos app has editing capabilities, but they're not terribly exciting — especially when compared to Snapseed . Here, you select from a number of from a number of tools and filters, and proceed to pinch and swipe your way to a transformed image.

You get all the basics - cropping, rotation, healing brushes, and the like — but the filters are where you can get really creative.

There are blurs, photographic effects, and more extreme options like 'grunge' and 'grainy film', which can add plenty of atmosphere to your photographs. The vast majority of effects are tweakable, mostly by dragging up and down on the canvas to select a parameter and then horizontally to adjust its strength.

Brilliantly, the app records applied effects as separate layers, and each remains editable until you decide to save your image and work on something else. Combinations of edits can be saved as custom filters you can subsequently apply to more images with a tap.

Our favorite iPad apps for being productive with notes, to-dos, reminders, mind-mapping, calendars and calculators.

Pomodoro Timer - Focused Work (free or $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99 per month)

Pomodoro Timer - Focused Work is a timer designed to boost productivity. At its most basic, you can fire off a timer to track work/break sprints. An optional floating timer can sit above other apps, meaning Focused Work doesn’t need a slot in Stage Manager. 

Dig deeper and you can define and group custom focus sessions designed for your projects or goals (be they work, exercise or even meditation). This flexibility frees the app from the rigidity found in most pomodoro timers, and ensures it works specifically for you. 

Built-in journaling, streaks and stats add layers of reflection, to help you improve things in the future. Focus filters and Siri shortcuts make the app a good iPadOS citizen. And if you’re still struggling to focus, you can have the app block distracting apps and websites while you work. In all, it’s the complete package.

Dashkit (free + IAP)

Dashkit comes across like a spiritual successor to the dearly departed classic Status Board. Like that app, Dashkit is all about personalized modules that feature the data that’s important to you, be that time, weather, web feeds, reminders, or charts from spreadsheets. There’s even scope to script modules yourself.

In a world where iPad widgets exist, you might wonder if there’s a need for Dashkit – and there is overlap. But Dashkit neatly keeps modules contained, they are simple to rearrange and re-edit, and you can have as many dashboards as you choose. It all feels very coherent and solid.

The dashboards look good and the app’s yearly subscription ($5.49/£4.99/AU$8.49) is reasonable for the value it provides; but Dashkit also lets you check out much of what it offers – including clocks, events, reminders, feeds and charts – entirely for free, so give it a go!

Reeder 5 ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

Reeder 5 aims to simplify and consolidate online reading. You can use the app to subscribe to website RSS feeds, thereby ensuring you never miss a headline from favorite sources. But also, you can send individual articles to Reeder from Safari to read later at your convenience.

The reading view itself is primarily concerned with efficiency. Rather than the original web page, you just get its content, and text settings can be adjusted to suit your needs. Should you wish to make reading more mindful, you can opt to activate Bionic Reading .

With support for a range of third-party RSS and read-later services, Reeder 5 is a beautifully designed and carefully considered one-stop-shop for all your online reading needs.

GoodLinks ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

GoodLinks is a read-later service. This means you save web pages to it, and the app extracts the text and images so you can browse them later in a distraction-free interface.

Rival apps Pocket and Instapaper are free, so what does GoodLinks do to justify its price tag? For a start, there are no ads and no accounts - everything syncs via iCloud. There are also no gated features, meaning you can from day one adjust typography, search your archive, and organize saved links.

The app also provides options for customization and tinkering. With Quick Save, you can avoid the standard save sheet that invites you to tag saved articles. Elsewhere, custom actions can immerse GoodLinks within Shortcuts automations.

These extras shift GoodLinks into territory beyond the more typical read-later app; but even if you only use it for the basics, GoodLinks is a solid choice.

Fantastical (free or $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99 per month)

Fantastical ’s developer reasons that a calendar is most helpful when it saves you time, rather than merely keeping track of where your time goes. Therefore, although this iPad app works with your existing calendar data (be that iCloud, Exchange or Google), it also offers various clever features to help speed things along.

In the main view, a scrolling ticker quickly gets you to events, past and present. Integrated weather forecasts ensure you won’t be caught unawares by a sudden shower – at your current locale or wherever an event is taking place.

There are also very ‘human’ touches – the way Fantastical can quickly interpret natural language while you create events; the means to offer event participants multiple time slots, and have the app figure out scheduling based on responses. In all, it amounts to a calendar that’s just as usable as Apple’s, but that helps you become far more productive.

1Blocker (free or $14.99/£14.99/AU$24.49 per year)

1Blocker removes the junk from web browsing – intrusive adverts and trackers, pop-ups, cookie notices, comments, social media inserts, and more. Install the app, and Safari is transformed – all the more important on a modern iPad where you get the desktop experience, which often comes with associated desktop cruft. 

This is no one-size-fits-all solution. You can delve into seriously extensive settings, to toggle entire sets of tools (if, for example, you want comments on by default), or fine-tune things on a per-site basis, including defining custom rules regarding cookies and CSS blocks.

Originally a paid app, 1Blocker now requires a subscription for most of its features, but this comes with the benefit of monthly cloud rule updates and unlocks Mac support. If you hate paying a smallish outlay every year, there’s also a permanent premium IAP for $38.99/£37.99/AU$60.99.

Magpie (free + $2.99/£2.49/AU$4.49 per month)

Magpie is a mash-up of a notes app and a reminders system, designed for anyone who tends to remember things using photos. Of course, Apple’s own Notes app enables you to add imagery, but Magpie is fully optimized for the task.

In each named list, you can store unlimited numbers of notes. Photos are given prominence within the interface, but you can add text notes, along with a price, link, and location map. The layout of entries is excellent – a big plus over what Notes offers.

The lifetime purchase price of $35.99/£34.99/AU$55.99 is perhaps a touch ambitious, and it would be good to see exported notes match the app’s own gorgeous layouts. But Magpie nonetheless proves its worth for gift lists, and as a means for creative types to craft organized sets of visual reminders.

NordVPN (various IAP)

NordVPN is a VPN for your iPad. It secures and encrypts all internet traffic from your device, making it almost impossible for anyone else to decipher. Because you can connect to servers in specific countries, you can also use it to get around geographic restrictions.

This might all sound a bit suspicious, but VPNs are increasingly vital. They enable you to secure your connection on public Wi-Fi, and to access key websites and services that would otherwise be inaccessible – whether for political or commercial reasons.

NordVPN works very nicely on iPad. It’s easy to set things up, and a breeze to use. Connections tend to be reliable and only rarely noticeably slower than standard Wi-Fi. Do, though, subscribe via the NordVPN website rather than through the app, because you’ll get much better offers.

MindNode 6 (free + $14.99/£14.99/AU$22.99)

MindNode 6 is a desktop-quality mind-mapping tool. You can start with a blank canvas and a central thought, and add further nodes to connect. Or there’s a Quick Entry system that converts a bullet-point list to a mind map with a single tap.

Either way, once you get going, you’ll appreciate MindNode’s flexibility. The app makes good use of the touchscreen, allowing free-form diagram construction, or you can enforce stricter layouts by way of pre-defined positioning. 

Should your mind map become complex, you can focus on one part, fading out the rest. Stickers, images, and color options ensure what you create can have added context and visual interest.

With iCloud support, your mind maps are available to other iOS devices as well. And a wide range of export formats means the ideas you get out of your head are easily shareable with others.

1Blocker X - Adblock ($4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99)

1Blocker X - Adblock blocks annoyances that may otherwise worsen your internet browsing experience on iPad.

Approve 1Blocker X in Settings, then configure it to block adverts, trackers, social widgets and more on a global basis. You can also hide specific web page elements, if they annoy or bother you. The net result is nippier browsing and more privacy.

If there are sites you’d like to support by not blocking their ads, 1Blocker makes this easy, too. You can manually define a whitelist in the app itself, or whitelist directly in Safari from the Share sheet.

With 1Blocker X being a premium app, and the indie creators prizing privacy, you can be sure this is the real deal. In short, it’s best-in-kind on iPad, and highly recommended.

Yoink (US$5.99/£5.99/AU$9.99)

Yoink is what’s known as a ‘shelf’ app – a kind of souped-up clipboard that can be used to collate files and content from disparate sources.

On iPad, Yoink proves especially useful, working in Split View and Slide Over, and making it a cinch to gather images, text, URLs and documents. You can import items as well, and even get at things you’ve stashed on other devices by way of iCloud sync.

With extended use, Yoink feels like an app that sweats the details. Copying and removing items depends on the status of a padlock icon. What you’ve saved in Yoink can be browsed in Apple’s Files app. You can edit text documents within Yoink, and interact with it via Siri. In all, it’s indispensable for power users – or anyone wanting a place to quickly store items before subsequently sharing them. 

LiquidText PDF Reader (free + $29.99/£29.99/AU$46.99)

LiquidText PDF Reader has a misleading name. Although it is for reading and annotating PDFs, thinking it only capable of those things does the app a disservice. Really, you should consider it a hugely powerful product for dynamically gathering your thoughts, and quickly getting at important content within documents.

For free, you can import PDFs (along with Microsoft Office files), make highlights, and drag excerpts to a work area. Go pro and you can gather and link information across multiple files.

The app feels perfectly suited to the touchscreen. You can use Apple Pencil to scribble live ink lines that become dynamic links between documents. Gestures enable you to quickly collapse lengthy documents to read highlights, search results, or non-contiguous pages. For students, researchers, and anyone who wants to go beyond paper, LiquidText is a must-have.

Noted (free + $0.99/79p/AU$1.49)

Noted cleverly combines an audio recorder and notepad. The rich text editor is like a simplified Pages, with predefined styles for headings and lists, image support, and a highlighter for drawing a reader’s attention to important bits.

That’s nothing new on iPad, but the way text and audio integrate is. During recordings, tapping the tag button adds an inline ‘#TimeTag’. Tapping this tag later will jump to the relevant point in the recording. This means you can spend more time in meetings and lectures listening, and later return to flesh out brief notes, adding context based on the audio.

Naturally, Noted’s own format is bespoke, but you can share notes with other users via iCloud. Otherwise, you can export audio to M4A format, and everything else to PDF. In all, then, an ideal productivity aid for a wide range of scenarios.

OmniOutliner 3 (from $9.99/£9.99/AU$14.99)

OmniOutliner 3 is a desktop-quality outlining tool that aims to bring structured writing to the masses.

It’s effectively two apps in one. Essentials is about quickly getting down and organizing ideas hierarchically. It’s quick and easy to add, promote and demote items (including with a physical keyboard, so you don’t have to keep reaching for the screen), and to shift rows around with drag and drop. The built-in search further elevates the app from more basic tools, filtering out non-matching rows so you only see only what’s relevant.

If your needs are greater, you can opt for Pro (US$39.99/£38.99/AU$62.99). This pushes the app towards word processing and spreadsheet territory, adding automation, styling options for document types (lists, book drafts, mathematical and so on) and section navigation from a sidebar. In either incarnation, the app is excellent, and a free two-week trial lets you switch between both versions to see which best suits.

Things 3 ($19.99/£19.99/AU$30.99)

Things 3 is a powerful task manager based around to-dos. Its ultimate aim is to ensure you get more done, and this is achieved by a smart and sleek workflow model that makes it simple to collect your thoughts, figure out your day, and plan far into the future.

The app can be as expansive or as simple as you need it to be. You can live in the Today and Upcoming views, working from basic to-dos, or add extra context and nested lists for more complex tasks. As of iOS 11, Things 3 added support for Split View and drag-and-drop, so you can drag links or emails right to a to-do.

This is the kind of app where you quickly wonder how you lived without it. And although it’s pricey when you buy it across iPad, iPhone and Mac, the time you’ll gain ensures it’s good value for money.

Our favorite iPad apps for weather forecasts and planning a journey.

Carrot Weather (from $4.99/£4.99/AU$7.99 per month)

Carrot Weather has long been an app that’s married smart design, usability, immediacy and snark. Its forecasts are presented by a human-hating AI that delights in your misfortune, thereby creating that rarest of beasts: a weather app with personality. However, it’s a weather app beyond compare when you want to make it personal too.

You can customize almost every element of the interface, rearranging panels and adjusting how they look. On iPad, version 5’s three-pane view is fantastic, turning the device’s large screen into a weather station where you can scan every metric in an instant. Throw in widgets, games and notifications and you’ve got the best weather app on the system – and one that justifies the outlay if you subscribe.

Ventusky ($2.99/£2.99/AU$4.99)

Ventusky is a weather app that feels at home on iPad. Instead of filling your screen with stats and figures, it focuses on a beautifully animated map. Wind patterns streak across your display, helping to outline where weather’s coming from (and heading to).

The map is interactive. Layers can be switched between conditions, including temperature, rainfall, and cloud cover. You can pinch to zoom, shrinking the map to a tiny globe you can spin with a finger. (A 2D alternative exists in the settings.)

Drag the location forecast upward and you can dig down into further details: an hourly forecast; precipitation graphs; moon phases. It lacks the ‘Will I get soaked?’ imminent rainfall warning from Dark Sky, but as an exploratory large-screen iPad app, Ventusky is an excellent purchase.

WeatherPro for iPad (US$0.99/79p/AU$0.99)

WeatherPro for iPad is a weather app for people at the geekier end of the spectrum when it comes to meteorology and forecasts. It’s far from the prettiest app in the world, but it does pack a ton of information into your iPad’s display.

Set up several locations and their current conditions sit in a scrolling pane at the side of the screen. For the current selection, you can in the main pane check out a rainfall radar, along with the outlook for the coming week. And that’s way beyond a few symbols and temperature predictions – graphs and wiggly lines outline sun hours, precipitation, wind, and more.

For at-a-glance forecasting, you’re probably better off with Dark Sky. But for digging into the details, Weather Pro’s a good bet, especially considering the small outlay. 

Poison Maps ($1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Poison Maps is an app for finding points of interest – POIs – on maps. Hence: Poison Maps. If you were hoping it’d provide insight into finding toxins, you’re out of luck, but for restaurants, hotels, banks, tourist attractions, parking, shops, hospitals and so on, it does the job – millions of such POIs can be found by way of the efficient search function.

This might strike you as unnecessary, given the existence of the entirely free Google Maps, but Poison Maps has some trump cards. First, it has interesting and useful interface components, such as signs that clearly denote the distance to and direction of off-screen POIs.

Beyond static POIs, cycling and transport routes are built-in. Poison Maps also works offline, so should you find yourself in a new town and without a data connection, you’ll still have a fighting chance of finding the things you need.

Tinyclouds (US$1.99/£1.99/AU$2.99)

Tinyclouds is an adorable weather app. That’s perhaps a slightly odd description to use for something that’s usually utilitarian, but then Carrot Weather (elsewhere in this list) showcases how weather apps can have a character of their own, and Tinyclouds is certainly unique.

Select a location (you can store several within the app) and it provides a big temperature reading at the top of the sidebar, along with a forecast for the rest of the day and an outlook for the coming week. The rest of the screen is an ever-changing isometric city, with cars zipping about, its weather mirroring that of your chosen location.

The app does, admittedly, feel like a sketch – it could do with more detail, and at least a wider range of views. Still, as a simple, great-looking weather app for a docked and charging iPad, it’s well worth a couple of bucks.

Living Earth ($3.99/£3.99/AU$5.99)

As a combination clock and weather app, Living Earth works well across all iOS devices, but use it with an iPad in a stand and you've got something that'll make other clocks in the immediate vicinity green with envy.

As you might expect, your first job with the app is to define the cities you'd like to keep track of. At any point, you can then switch between them, updating the main clock and weather forecasts accordingly. Tap the weather and you can access an extended forecast for the week; tap the location and you get the current times and weather for your defined locations.

But it's the Earth that gets pride of place, taking up the bulk of the screen. It shows clouds by default, although weather geeks can instead choose colors denoting temperature, wind speed or humidity values. Then with a little swipe the globe rotates, neatly showing heavily populated locations during night time as lattices of artificial man-made light.

Google Maps (free)

You might argue that Google Maps is far better suited to a smartphone, but we reckon the king of mapping apps deserves a place on your iPad, too. Apple's own Maps app has improved, but Google still outsmarts its rival when it comes to public transport, finding local businesses, saving chunks of maps offline, and virtual tourism by way of Street View.

Google's 'OS within an OS' also affords a certain amount of cross-device sync when it comes to searches. We don't, however, recommend you strap your cellular iPad to your steering wheel and use Google Maps as a sat-nav replacement, unless you want to come across as some kind of nutcase.

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The best travel apps for Android & iOS

If you’re off on a big holiday, perhaps backpacking through Europe or Asia, you’ll want to be fully prepared. There’s a shedload of Android and iOS travel apps that claim they will make your trip better. Few actually can. So we’ve gone to the trouble of finding the best holiday and travel apps out there. 

So whether you’re booking flights and hotels for international travel, or exploring your own backyard, there’s an app here to help you. If you still haven’t booked your trip, though,   check   out   our   guide   on   how to book a   holiday   online .

With a decent   roaming package from your operator  or a decent hotel Wi-Fi connection, these apps will help you plan your trip, find the best mojito in town, or get you out of sticky travel situations.

If you want to be even more prepared, check out our round up of the best travel gadgets  too.

• RRP:  Free
• Get from App Store UK  or  App Store US
• Get  from Google Play

The Kayak app is a bit of an all-rounder when it comes to holiday planning. You’ll be able to use it to find and book hotels, flights and cars, and also track flights and manage your trip agenda.

There’s also a price alerts feature that’ll help you get the best deal on the holiday you’re hoping to go on, as well as a packing list to ensure you don’t forget anything.

It’s got a really smart, intuitive interface too, so getting the information you need is quick and easy. For example, once you’ve chosen your city and holiday dates, Kayak’s search engine will bring up a long list of available hotels, clearly showing a photo, the hotel’s rating and the price it’ll cost you for each hotel so you can skip right past the horrible or expensive ones.

TripAdvisor

• Get  from App Store UK   or  App Store US

One of the most popular apps to use while planning your holiday travels is TripAdvisor, the main benefit being the huge number of hotel reviews that have been written by holidaymakers themselves.

You can make your decision about pretty much any hotel you’re interested in based on the reviews left on TripAdvisor, which will tell you about everything from the food and the cleanliness of the rooms, to the service and location.

Even if you don’t book your hotel through TripAdvisor, it’s well worth checking the reviews before you make your decision about where you want to stay.

TripAdvisor also lets you find and book flights as well as restaurants.

Booking.com

• Get   from App Store UK  or App Store US

Another great app for booking hotels is Booking.com, especially if you’re looking to book it last minute or if you’re one of those brave people who waits until they arrive to book somewhere.

There’s a feature that helps you find available hotels nearby, and it works in more than 64,000 destinations around the world. Plus, as well as showing available hotels, Booking.com also includes villas and apartments.

Like TripAdvisor, Booking.com features reviews of each hotel from people who’ve been there, and you can use the app to go through the entire booking process.

• Get   from App Store UK  or   App Store US

For booking both hotels and flights, Expedia is a good app. It’s nicely designed (though sometimes there’s a little too much information to take in at once) and it offers some exclusive deals that might be right up your (holiday) street.

As with TripAdvisor and Booking.com, Expedia has reviews from real customers, and lets you book everything straight from the app.

Another hotel discovery and booking app is Hotels.com, which has recently had a rather nice redesign. Just like TripAdvisor, Booking.com and Expedia, Hotels.com helps you find good hotels (and hotel deals) in the area you’re planning to travel to, and has helpful filters to weed out the hotels that won’t work for you.

There’s also a map feature for nearby hotels, which you can book straight from the app.

Really, which of these four similar apps you use is down to your personal preference. They’re all free, so it’s worth giving them a try until you find the one you like best.

Apps from developer Triposo can help you plan your visit to pretty much any country in the world. You can’t use this app to book flights, but you can use it to book tours and discover local attractions and “hidden gems” in and around your chosen destination.

For example, if you’re planning to travel to Italy, you can download Triposo’s Italy Travel Guide (it’s free) to find out what there is to do in the city you’re going to, such as Rome, Florence or Venice.

You’ll find maps with highlighted attractions, restaurants, bars, supermarkets and photo opportunities, as well as information such as directions, reviews and contact details for restaurants, museums and more. These guides, handily, can also be viewed offline.

Other handy features include a phrasebook and currency converter. There’s also a Triposo app that encompasses the entire world, so if you’ve not yet made up your mind about where you’re heading, this might be a better option for you.

Using Skyscanner, you can search flights from hundreds of airlines around the world to find the cheapest and best ones. You can also use it to book hotels and cars. It’s free to download, though you will spot some ads unless you’re willing to cough up the £1.49 in-app purchase to remove them.

Definitely worth a check before you book your flight.

This is a rather nice app for both planning your holiday and helping you out when you get there. You can use it after you’ve already booked your accommodation and flights, as you can enter all of your trip details into TripCase to keep them all in one place and find out if anything has changed (if your flight has been delayed, for example).

In addition to hotel reservations, flights and other transport, you can also add details of trips you plan to make, attractions you’ve booked and restaurants you’d like to eat at. Sharing the itinerary with others who’re coming on your trip with you, or even with those you’re leaving behind at home, can come in useful to keep everyone in the loop.

Plus, there’s a 10-day weather forecast included, so you’ll know what to pack and you can rearrange your plans to avoid the rain.

Currently  available in 39 cities worldwide , CityMapper is an excellent app for navigating public transport and walking directions. As long as you’re   set up with a good roaming plan   so you don’t get charged the earth, it’ll get you from A to B (or from the club to your bed) with excellent step by step instructions based on your current location. It’s a potential lifesaver in a foreign city.

Google Maps

The king of map apps remains Google’s. We’ve found that day in, day out it offers the most reliable routes while remaining very intuitive and easy to use. A plethora of options, from bus-only routes to an optimised in-car GPS mode make this ridiculously good for a free app.

Perhaps one of its still best kept secrets is offline mode – if you’re abroad and haven’t got a data package, you can find where you’re going for the day on your hotel Wi-Fi and   save that map for offline use . Google claims the biggest download size for an offline area is 120,000 square kilometres, so we think you’ll be fine for a day or two!

You lose GPS navigation, but carrying around a section of unfamiliar city in your pocket in traditional map form is incredibly handy.

An app for beer lovers the world over, Untappd lets you create your own profile and then discover the best beer in town. You can check in at various watering holes and post opinions on local tipples and talk to others who have been to the same places.

For travelling it’s great, as you can search for popular pubs or simply those closest to you, and hopefully get an idea of what’s on tap there. You can also search for individual beers to see where they are being served near to you – very handy in a city you’re new to.

OpenTable is a great research and booking app for restaurants while you’re away in the United States, Canada, Mexico, England, Ireland, Germany, Australia or Japan.

You can search by location, cuisine, price and more and book tables instantly – great in unfamiliar cities where most places are bound to have a user-generated review too, meaning nights out when away just got a whole lot easier. 

You can even send booking invitations to friends, ask them to RSVP, and add booking to your phone’s calendar, meaning OpenTable is one of the best integrated apps on offer. Plus, you earn reward points for future meals.

Google Translate

We love this app. It is as intuitive and versatile as you’d expect from a Google-made app and has some excellent features, from fun to downright practical.

You can set the written language and the language to translate into, which then displays on the screen after you type it in. You can even make it full screen to read easier or show to a (likely unimpressed, but oh well) local. 

Even more useful, particularly for menu reading, is the auto-translate option via your smartphone’s camera. Turn it on and hold your phone up to a foreign language sign, and the app translates each individual word for a quick and easy rough translation. Helpful if you don’t want to accidentally order the pig’s tongue.

XE Currency

For the money conscious traveler (which really should be all of us) this is a standard meat and potatoes currency converter. It’s worth using instead of a pre-installed smartphone function as it is updated with live rates and has around 180 currencies listed.

And it’ll help you check whether the rickety shed you’re getting your new currency from  – because you didn’t do it at the Post Office before you traveled – is really ripping you off or not.

It also has a simple conversion calculator for when you can’t resist the allure of a duty-free iPad. This will help you check if the saving is truly worth it.

The beauty of Eventbrite is it is location-based and has a presence in many major world cities. Depending on your GPS location or preset preferences, it’ll pick out popular events in your area.

You can then see who is going via the linked Facebook event (if there is one), check Google Maps and buy tickets all within the Eventbrite app.

The app then stores your e-tickets, helps set calendar reminders and gives you travel directions. It’s a great hub if you want to go to lots of ticketed events when abroad, and it’ll serve you well when you get back home too.

• Get  from App Store UK  or  App Store US

Travltalk is an app best suited to solo travellers who have gotten a little too old to hang around the hostel common room to make friends. You use the app to create a card suggesting an activity you’d like to get up to, and can then swipe through other travellers’ cards to find people you want to hang out with.

That’s not all though. The app also makes it easy to connect with other travellers to split costs for travel or accommodation – making it easy to find someone else wanting a taxi from the airport to the centre of town at about the same time as you, for example.

Finally, a more backpacker-focused feature offers a sort of mini marketplace where travellers can sell on any gear or equipment that they no longer need and don’t want to keep carrying around with them.

The core app is free, but there’s a £0.99/$0.99 monthly subscription that lets you create cards in other countries – ideal for planning a trip in advance.

Author: Henry Burrell , Contributor

Previously Tech Advisor’s Phones Editor, Henry covers and reviews every smartphone worth knowing about. He spends a lot of time moving between different handsets and shouting at WhatsApp to support multiple devices at once.

Recent stories by Henry Burrell:

• Fairphone 5 review
• How to set up a new Android phone
• The latest regular iPad is finally worth buying

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Copyright © 2024 Apple Inc. All rights reserved.

'ZDNET Recommends': What exactly does it mean?

ZDNET's recommendations are based on many hours of testing, research, and comparison shopping. We gather data from the best available sources, including vendor and retailer listings as well as other relevant and independent reviews sites. And we pore over customer reviews to find out what matters to real people who already own and use the products and services we’re assessing.

When you click through from our site to a retailer and buy a product or service, we may earn affiliate commissions. This helps support our work, but does not affect what we cover or how, and it does not affect the price you pay. Neither ZDNET nor the author are compensated for these independent reviews. Indeed, we follow strict guidelines that ensure our editorial content is never influenced by advertisers.

ZDNET's editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form .

One of the best tablets for work travel I've tested is not an iPad Pro or Microsoft Surface

ZDNET's key takeaways

• The Asus ProArt PZ13 is an artistically-aligned laptop available at Best Buy for $1,100.
• It's ready to help pro-level artists with its vibrant OLED touchscreen, long battery life, and supportive apps.
• The device is held back by a limited array of ports and a substandard keyboard. 

A couple of months ago, I tested out Microsoft's Surface Pro 11 , a laptop that doubles as a tablet. It has Qualcomm's next-gen chipset and a lot of great features that made me enjoy the machine. I highly recommend it to business professionals who frequently travel. It seems Asus must've seen the Surface Pro and thought to itself, "We can do better." The result of this inspiration is the Asus ProArt PZ13 .

Also: The best battery life laptops of 2024: Expert tested and reviewed

I mentioned the Surface Pro 11 because the two share many similarities, although the ProArt model is better suited for artists and creative professionals.

ZDNET RECOMMENDS

Asus proart pz13.

Asus' new ProArt PZ13 laptop is a lightweight machine that punches well above its weight class. Qualcomm's energy-efficient Snapdragon X SoC can take on the toughest of tasks.

Upon lifting the laptop out of its box for the first time, you'll be greeted with a 13.3-inch, 3K (2880 x 1800 pixels) OLED touchscreen. Its resolution isn't as high as Microsoft's laptop, although the ProArt PZ13 more than makes up for this with image-enhancing apps.

It has Dolby Vision, support for the entire DCI-P3 color gamut, and VESA DisplayHDR True Black for ultra-dark shadows. Everything works together to ensure a stunning visual experience, except for the 60Hz refresh rate. That's a fine speed, but I would've liked to have 120Hz. At 60Hz, motion and animations on this laptop can look a little blurry.

Also:  One of the most versatile laptops I've tested is a crowd-pleaser with solid hardware

The device has a really neat feature called Creator Hub. It's a dashboard app that lets you adjust the PZ13 on the fly. The most impressive of its many tools is Color Control, which lets you change the on-screen color gamut at any time. For example, the DCI-P3 option tweaks the colors so they're best suited for movies while Display P3 is recommended for artists as it more accurately displays hues. You can even adjust the color temperature. 

Creator Hub gives creative professionals a great amount of flexibility. Although I'm not an artist myself, I certainly appreciate having the ability to fine-tune my experience instantly.

Asus' machine is no slouch either, as inside the ProArt PZ13 is a Snapdragon X Plus chipset. I was able to maintain about 60 tabs open without experiencing any major slowdown. I had videos playing and Twitch streams running, and I could still check out my email without any issue.

Sadly, I couldn't get a specific benchmark number on the SoC (system on a chip). None of the major benchmarking tests have been updated for the Snapdragon X, but hopefully, that day will come soon.

Also: This lightweight laptop has one of the best displays I've seen, and it's not a MacBook Air

Like other Qualcomm-based laptops, the ProArt PZ13 has a ridiculously long battery life, and for once, the marketing materials were correct. This device ran for over 21 hours straight when on the Best Power Efficiency mode. I left it on overnight and was shocked to see it was still active in the morning. On Best Performance mode, the model manages to outperform most Intel-based laptops, as it lasted for about 14.5 hours on a single charge.

These battery times are perfect if you ever need to take the ProArt PZ13 on the road. There's no need to worry about the laptop dying on you at the worst moment.

The tablet is 0.35 inches thick and weighs a little under two pounds. Asus throws in a muted-green protective cover with the purchase. The cover adds some bulk to the device, although not by much. It'll fit snugly inside a bag.

As much as I like Asus' new computer, I didn't like the ProArt PZ13's keyboard. Asus states it has a 1.4mm key travel distance. On paper, that should ensure a good typing experience, but I felt the keyboard was flimsy. Pressing a key bends the accessory a bit.

Also: One of the longest-lasting laptops I've tested also has a gorgeous display

Furthermore, there are very few ports. You get three in total: two USB-C inputs and an SD card reader. Granted, the device is somewhat thin, so perhaps Asus couldn't find room for any more ports. Still, it could've at least included a headphone jack.

My last critique is admittedly a nitpick. I would've appreciated a free stylus in the overall package. Microsoft's 11th-gen Surface Pro had one when I got it, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. So unless you already have a pen, you'll have to buy one for the PZ13, which isn't a big issue since the laptop is fairly cheap.

ZDNET's buying advice

Prices for the Asus ProArt PZ13 start at $1,100 on Best Buy , which is a steal. There is a more powerful version available on Asus' website --  for $1,649 , you can purchase a ProArt PZ13 sporting Qualcomm's Hexagon NPU, delivering extra power.

Other than that, they're the same device. Get the Hexagon version only if you are expecting heavy workloads.

How we test laptops

We use a combination of methods to test laptops here at ZDNET. First, we acquire data from benchmarking software to analyze a system's metrics under the hood, and compare those to advertised numbers. Then, we spend an extended amount of time with the laptop (usually a week or two) using it the same way a typical consumer would, in order to analyze its portability, form factor, and how well the battery  actually  holds up, among others. For an extensive breakdown, check out our comprehensive  laptop testing methodology .

• Benchmarking:  We run a series of tests to put the computer's hardware through the wringer in order to see what it's capable of.  Cinebench  is one of the most commonly-used hardware testing suites, which tests the laptop's rendering performance on single and multiple CPU cores.  PCMark 10  is another powerful program that covers a wide variety of tasks performed in the workplace.
• Processor:  The "brain" of the laptop, and one of the most important factors that determines performance. This is tested in benchmarking software.

The display:  Brightness is measured in "nits," and color spectrums are tested in benchmarking software.

The graphics processor (GPU):  We test the GPU with a combination of benchmarking software, gaming, and media playback. 

Physical form factor:  We carry the laptop around for at least a week and note how well it commutes.

• Battery testing:  We test a unit's battery in a few ways. A handful of benchmarking programs have their own battery testing components, but we also will just let the laptop run for as long as it can under a medium load. 
• The human element:   As we mentioned earlier, metrics and system data is important, but numbers alone don't give you the full picture. This is where we weave in our personal experience with the device and tap into the practical use cases that consumers actually care about. 

Ultimately, our goal is to break down the capabilities of each and every laptop we test into digestible terms that people find useful.  

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