If you edit photos or draw on an iPad, there is a new free option from Canva. Canva put Affinity on iPad on 2 November, and individuals can use it without paying.
Signing in needs a free Canva account. A single download covers what used to be three apps: Photo, Designer and Publisher.
Canva announced it on its Affinity site. The desktop app launched a year ago and has since signed up more than seven million people; an iPad version was what users asked for most.
Apple Pencil Pro is supported
The app reads pressure, tilt, barrel roll, squeeze and hover from the Pencil Pro. A new Sketch Studio is meant for freehand drawing and can tidy rough lines into clean shapes.
Everything you make can live in one .af file, from sketch to layout, so there is no export and re-import between steps. Common design formats from other programs still open.
Where the bill appears
The AI tools are the paid part. They include Generative Expand, upscaling, motion blur and noise reduction, and a Decompose Layer feature that splits a flat picture into editable layers. The Verge reports that they require Canva Pro, which starts at $18 a month.
When Canva bought Affinity’s maker Serif in 2024, some users feared the one-off pricing would end. Both companies promised not to push subscriptions, and the core tools on iPad stay free.
Affinity’s head of product design, Neil Ladkin, said every decision was made by people who create on iPad themselves, “from how the Apple Pencil responds to where the tools sit.” The app is a free download from the App Store.
