Browsing the App Store

To get started, tap the App Store icon (shown in the margin) on your iPad’s Home screen. After you launch the App Store, you see five icons at the bottom of the screen, representing five ways to interact with the store, as shown in Figure 10-2. The first three icons— Today, Games, and Apps— offer three ways to browse the virtual shelves of the App Store. (We get to the fourth and fifth icons, Arcade and Search, shortly.)

The Today section, shown in Figure 10-2, highlights curated selections from the App Store, including Game of the Day and App of the Day, themed collections such as Top Games of the Week, and staff favorites (not shown in the figure).

The Games section lets you browse games in categories such as AR Games, New Games We Love, and Essential Game Picks, to name a few. Scroll down and you’ll find sections for Top Paid Games, Top Free Games, Top Game Categories, and more.

The Apps section is like déjà vu all over again if you’ve already visited the Games section. It also contains categories such as Great on iPad, Our Favorites, and Apple Pencil Starter Kit, as shown in Figure 10-3. Scroll down a little farther and you’ll find Top Paid Apps, Top Free Apps, Top App Categories, and more.

Most pages in the App Store display more apps than can fit on the screen at once. For example, the New to iPad section in Figure 10-3 contains more than the four apps you can see. A few tools help you navigate the Games, Apps, and other sections of the App Store:

• Swipe from right to left to see more apps in most categories.
• Swipe up the screen to scroll down and see additional categories.
• Tap the See All link at the top right of most sections to (what else?) see all the apps in that section on one screen at the same time.

Arcade

Apple introduced Arcade, a subscription game service, with iPadOS. It’s the fourth icon at the bottom of the App Store. And it’s really cool — let us tell you why!

With Arcade, you get on-demand access to more than 100 games, with Apple adding more every week. These are high-quality, top-tier games. Even better, none of them have in-app purchases, which means you can play the entire game without having to spend a penny outside the Arcade subscription itself. You'll find racing games, fighting games, strategy games, simulations, puzzles, mysteries, and so much more. These games are original, with most produced exclusively for Arcade.

But here’s the best part. Arcade is just $4.99 per month, and that includes everything. To subscribe, tap the Try It Free button in the Arcade section to start a 30-day free trial. If you unsubscribe before the trial ends, you won’t be charged. Otherwise, you’ll begin paying $4.99 per month through your Apple ID. If you love playing great games, that price makes Arcade a no-brainer. Some of our favorites so far include Red Reign, Mini Motorways, and LEGO Brawls.

Searching for apps

Finally, the last option at the bottom of the screen is Search, the magnifying glass icon. If you know exactly what you’re looking for (or even approximately what you’re looking for), just tap Search to bring up the virtual keyboard, and then type a word or phrase. Then tap the Search key to initiate the search.

That’s all there is to it.

Updating apps

Every so often the developer of an iPad app releases an update, but for some reason Apple made it harder to see your updates in the App Store in iPadOS. The Arcade icon on the Home screen replaced the Updates icon, so now you need to tap your profile button in the upper-right corner of any of the five main sections of the App Store. An account sheet will appear with your Apple ID, tabs for seeing previously purchased apps, managing subscriptions, redeeming gift cards and gift card codes, sending gift cards by email, and adding funds to your Apple ID.

At the bottom of the screen are recent and pending updates, with app icons, the name of each app, and update notes for the newest update. If an update has already been applied by the App Store, you'll see an Open button, which allows you to launch the app. If the app is waiting to be updated, you'll see an Update button. Tap the Update button to update the app. When the update is complete, the button changes to an Open button.

If you try to update an app purchased from any iTunes Store account except your own, you’re prompted for that account’s ID and password. If you can’t provide them, you can’t download the update. This doesn’t apply, of course, if you’ve enabled Family Sharing (see Chapter 15).

One last tip: If you download an app and it doesn’t work properly, try deleting and redownloading it from the App Store. Doing so fixes the problem as often as not.

Finding details about an app

Now that you know how to browse and search for apps in the App Store, the following sections show you how to find out more about a particular app. After tapping an app icon as you browse the store or in a search result, your iPad displays a details screen like the one shown in Figure 10-4.

Note the blue More link in the Preview section in Figure 10-4; click More to see a longer description of the app.

Bear in mind that the app description on this screen was written by the app’s developer and may be biased. Never fear, gentle reader: In an upcoming section, we show you how to find app reviews written by people who have used the app (and, unfortunately, sometimes people who haven’t).

Downloading an app

To download an app to your iPad from the App Store, follow these steps:

1. To start the download process, tap the blue price button (or the word Get or the download from iCloud icon) near the top of the app’s details screen.

   For apps with a price, the price button will morph into a blue Buy button. You may be prompted to sign in to your iTunes account, or to use Touch ID or Face ID to authorize the purchase. In Figure 10-4, you see the installing icon instead of a price because Bryan got too excited when he saw this app and paid for it before taking a screenshot.

2. Tap the blue Buy button.

   When the app is finished downloading and is installed on your iPad, the installing icon changes to an Open button.

3. Tap the Open button to launch the app.

   If you close the App Store before the app finishes installing, you see your new app’s icon on the Home screen. (Depending on how many apps you have installed on your iPad, you may need to swipe to another Home screen to find the new app.) The new app’s icon is slightly dimmed and has the word Loading below it, with a pie chart to indicate how much of the app remains to be downloaded (about one third, as shown in the margin).

4. If the app is rated 17+, click OK on the warning screen that appears after you type your password to confirm that you’re 17 or older before the app downloads.

The app is now on your iPad. If your iPad suddenly loses its memory (unlikely) or you delete the app from your iPad, you can download it again later from the App Store at no charge.

Deleting an app

Many of the preinstalled apps that came on your iPad — Photos, Camera, Contacts, Clock, Settings, and Messages, to name a few — can’t be removed. But you can delete other apps.

You can, however, hide some of Apple’s preinstalled apps by choosing Settings ⇒ Screen Time ⇒ Content & Privacy Restrictions ⇒ Allowed Apps. For any of the Apple apps listed, toggle the switch for the app you want to hide so that it goes from green to white.

Here’s how to delete an app on your iPad:

1. Press and hold any app icon until all the icons begin to wiggle.

2. Tap the little x in the upper-left corner of the app you want to delete.

   A dialog appears, informing you that deleting this app also deletes all its data, as shown in Figure 10-5.

   

3. Tap the Delete button.
4. To stop the icons from wiggling, press the Home or sleep/wake button, or swipe up from the bottom of your screen.

You also make icons wiggle to move them around on the screen or move them from page to page. To rearrange wiggling icons, press and drag them one at a time. If you drag an icon to the left or right edge of the screen, it moves to the next or previous Home screen. You can also drag additional icons to the dock (where Safari, Mail, Photos, and Music live) to make them available on every Home screen.

Writing an app review

Sometimes you love or hate an app so much that you want to tell the world about it. In that case, you should write a review. You can do this directly from your iPad.

To write a review from your iPad, follow these steps:

1. Tap the App Store icon to launch the App Store.
2. Navigate to the details screen for the app.

3. Tap one to five of the stars at the top of the screen to rate the app.

   You might have to type your iTunes Store password.

4. In the Title field, type a title for your review, and in the Review field, type your review.

5. Tap the Send button in the upper-right corner of the screen.

   Whichever way you submit your review, Apple reviews your submission. As long as the review doesn’t violate the (unpublished) rules of conduct for app reviews, it appears in a day or two in the App Store in the Reviews section for the particular app.

You can configure the behavior of many apps in the Settings app. Scroll all the way down the list of settings and you’ll find an alphabetical list of apps that have settings; tap an app in the list to see its settings.