Make your iPad more capable without having to splash the cash…

There are plenty of free App Store offerings that take advantage of the iPad’s bigger screen. You can stream TV shows and movies with a freebie app, for example, or watch videos at your convenience on the YouTube app. Or, if you’re more of a reader, why not enjoy ebooks on the Kindle app, read web comics on WEBTOON and much more. Here are just a few ways you can get even more out of your iPad at work or play.

Kindle

FROM Amazon.com

NEEDS iPadOS 14 or later While there’s no substitute for a dedicated Kindle with an e–ink screen, downloading the Kindle app to use on your iPad is pretty neat. The app is great to use with ebooks that have pictures or diagrams, or if you side– load PDFs onto your ebook reader, then you can read them on the Kindle app for iPad too. The app is free and it’s easy to buy books for it via the Amazon website (but you can’t buy them from within the app). As with the standard Kindle, you can download samples to try before you buy, including audio if you prefer to listen to audiobooks.

Igloo — IRC Client

FROM iglooirc.com

NEEDS iPadOS 10 or later This app’s visibility isn’t helped by the fact there’s several apps on the App Store called “Igloo”. Be sure to search for “Igloo IRC”. Igloo is a client for Internet Relay Chat (IRC). It’s used for internet chat rooms, a service that isn’t as popular as it used to be, but is worth a look if you enjoy chatting with people the world over. Igloo’s developers claim it’s the only IRC client on iOS to support DCC/XDCC downloads that get synced right to iCloud Drive, so you can access them on your iPhone/iPad in the Files app or on your Mac in a folder called “Igloo”, which is a definite bonus.