Canva Drops Free Affinity App on iPad With Apple Pencil Sketch Studio

Canva released Affinity for iPad on Monday, bringing the free all-in-one design app to Apple's tablet alongside a brand-new Sketch Studio built for touch and Apple Pencil. The launch follows last year's desktop relaunch, which merged the once-separate Affinity Designer, Photo and Publisher into a single Mac and Windows app. Canva had promised an iPad version for 2026, and says the desktop app has since racked up more than seven million sign-ups.

The iPad build folds sketching, vector graphics, photo editing and page layout into one interface. Users hop between Sketch, Vector, Pixel and Layout studios while staying inside the same .af file, which also opens on desktop. Sketch Studio brings freehand drawing with a customizable brush library, and Sketch to Shapes flips hand-drawn scribbles into editable vector shapes.

Photo tools include RAW editing, non-destructive adjustments and a Mask Tool meant to trace tricky edges like hair and fur with Apple Pencil. Layout handles multi-page documents, master pages and print-ready output. Canva insists the interface was designed for iPad from scratch rather than shrunk down from desktop, and Apple Pencil Pro support covers barrel roll, squeeze and hover on top of pressure and tilt.

The core sketching, vector, photo and layout tools are free for individuals — though you'll need a free Canva account to get in. The only paid features are the AI tools, locked behind a Canva premium plan, continuing the approach from the 2025 desktop relaunch. Those live in Canva AI Studio and include Generative Expand, image upscaling, noise reduction and Decompose Layer, which splits a flat image into editable layers.

Despite the shared file format, the iPad version launches without some desktop features. Affinity's website lists Books, Batch, Data Merge, Quick Adjustments, Info and Scope panels, macro recording and Astrophotography Studio among the omissions, with more promised over time. Affinity by Canva is a free App Store download with in-app purchases and needs iPadOS 18.0 or later.