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1 month ago
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Ahead of a mysterious announcement on October 30 iPad versions of Affinity's suite of apps — Affinity Photo, Affinity Publisher, and Affinity Designer — have been made entirely free. We think you need to move quickly to get this, though.
After Serif, the publisher of the Affinity apps, was acquired by Canva in 2024, it launched an extended free trial of all of its apps, across iPad and Mac. But this new offer, exclusive to the iPad editions, looks to be permanent — or a mistake.
Affinity has been promoting a big announcement, now scheduled for October 30, and describes it as "true creative freedom." But there are as yet no further details, and there has been no formal announcement of the free iPad apps.
At present, though, all three Affinity apps can be downloaded from the App Store on the iPad and kept for free from here:
To get each for free:
- Download the apps from the App Store on iPad
- Once installed, tap Buy Now
- Confirm the purchase
- Follow the prompt to register the app with your Affinity account
The apps each say first that you have them as a free trial for seven days. But when you tap the Buy Now button, the purchase price is listed as $0.
The apps download as free trials, but at present the purchase price has been set to 0
Once bought, you have to register for an Affinity account, but then the app is yours forever. The Affinity apps are exceptional, to the extent that there were concerns Canva would radically change these tools that many people rely on.
We've checked the downloadable versions for Mac, and they're still full price. We'll update this post if that changes.
Not all good news
Canva bought Serif on March 26, 2024. It's mostly left the company alone, until recently.
Those recent moves are a little concerning, though. The Serif YouTube channel is closed, and so is the company's plug-in store
Furthermore, the forums are going read-only on October 6, and you can't buy a universal license any longer. The Affinity site has also dropped all references to the existing suite of apps, including any visible download option — but if you Google, you can find the links.
The Mac App Store still has all the Affinity apps available, for full price.
There's a big announcement teased for October 30. While this free offer isn't advertised, and could be a mistake, we're not certain what's happening on that day.
So, this one feels like an app you download to your device, and keep forever, perhaps, if you start using it. We've already seen delistings after acquisitions, so it's not clear if the downloads for version 2 from the App Store will still be available, lifetime license or no.
