Affinity Publisher 2 for iPad
Page layout design, publishing
Free · In‑App Purchases
Work wherever and whenever you want without compromise, with Affinity Publisher 2 for iPad, the on-the-go version of our award-winning desktop publishing software. This equally powerful page layout and design app has everything you need to create books, brochures, posters, reports, letters, portfolios, magazine layouts, book covers, ebooks, and so much more.
OPTIMIZED FOR IPAD
• Fully integrated and optimized iPad gesture controls to speed up your workflow
• Command controller hosting on-screen modifiers
• Quick Menu for context-sensitive access to commands
• Context bar for all tools
• Sliders for various attributes
• Zoom to fit/zoom to previous, snapping, and preview mode options
• Metal accelerated to achieve blazing-fast performance, even when editing large images
• Sensitive to pressure, tilt, and angle, the app harnesses the full power and precision of Apple Pencil
• Full iCloud drive integration allows for seamless file management, storage, and sharing
• External display support with separate configuration options
PROFESSIONAL LAYOUT TOOLS
• Facing page spreads
• Live master pages
• Advanced guides, grids, and snapping
• Tables and custom table formats
• Wrap text around any object or image
• Create text frames of any shape
• Link multiple text frames together across your document
• Footnotes, sidenotes, and endnotes
ADVANCED TYPOGRAPHY
• Full control over character and paragraph styles
• Comprehensive OpenType support
• Write text along any path
• Advanced flow options and hyphenation
PERFECT IMAGES & GRAPHICS
• Link or embed images in your document
• Place PSD, AI, PDF, JPG, TIFF, PNG, DWG, or Affinity files
• Correct and enhance images with non-destructive adjustment layers
• Precision engineered pen and node tools for creating vector curves and shapes
• Boolean operations to add, subtract, combine, and divide shapes
BUILT FOR PRODUCTIVITY
• Section manager to organize your documents
• Savable undo history with alternate futures
• Smart master pages
• Automatically generate indexes and table of contents
• Manage and create anchors
• Save documents as template files to re-use time and time again
• Collate your document alongside all used image and font resources into a folder using the Package feature
• PDF passthrough
• Autoflow of multiple images and multi-page PDFs
• Running headers
• Cross-references
ADVANCED OPTIONS FOR PLACING CONTENT & IMPORT/EXPORT
• IDML & XLSX import
• Import/export from Adobe InDesign ® and other programs
• Layer visibility override for placed linked files (PDF/DWG/DXF/PSD and Affinity files)
• Place linked web images using URLs
• Dropbox API integration to retain placed resource linkage across multiple devices
• AutoCAD DWG/DXF import, place, and edit (maintaining layer structure and scaling)
PROFESSIONAL OUTPUT
• End-to-end CMYK, PANTONE© and spot color
• Live preflight checking
• PDF/X-1a, PDF/X-3, PDF/X-4 output for professional printed works
FULL INTEGRATION WITH OTHER AFFINITY APPS
• Instantly switch to the advanced photo editing features of Affinity Photo and precise vector tools of Affinity Designer without leaving Affinity Publisher with StudioLink
• The most fluid workflow ever conceived in a creative suite of applications
more On desktop, Affinity Publisher won our Mac App of the Year Award, providing all the tools necessary to lay out a large-format photo book, a poster for a school play, or a brochure for your small business. The new Affinity Publisher 2 lets you do all this and more using an interface optimized for touchscreen.
On desktop, Affinity Publisher won our Mac App of the Year Award, providing all the tools necessary to lay out a large-format photo book, a poster for a school play, or a brochure for your small business. The new Affinity Publisher 2 lets you do all this and more using an interface optimized for touchscreen.
Wow, this app is amazing First of all. All three apps are free now which is absolutely outstanding at least for the rest of this month so hurry up you don’t want to miss this completely free trial forever and ever I would like to mention so go go go right now before have to pay again please don’t miss this opportunity. This app is great as well as all three other apps that affinity has published get it so go go go it while you’re at it. You should probably download a 50 follower Designer 2 cause all three of them are $0.00 tax included and for the apps interface epic it’s pretty good. I like it if you have all three apps, unless you use all through the apps features without even having to go to the other app, so download it please it’s awesome.
Wow, this app is amazing First of all. All three apps are free now which is absolutely outstanding at least for the rest of this month so hurry up you don’t want to miss this completely free trial forever and ever I would like to mention so go go go right now before have to pay again please don’t miss this opportunity. This app is great as well as all three other apps that affinity has published get it so go go go it while you’re at it. You should probably download a 50 follower Designer 2 cause all three of them are $0.00 tax included and for the apps interface epic it’s pretty good. I like it if you have all three apps, unless you use all through the apps features without even having to go to the other app, so download it please it’s awesome.
I was in a hurry today. My current iPad Pro apps won't let me do quite what I need to do, at least not quickly. It sounded like Affinity Publisher could. All I needed to do was slant a font that I'm using in a graphic that I made in Procreate, and then rasterize it. Procreate doesn't have a faux italics option. Affinity Publisher theoretically allows you to slant the font though which I really truly needed to do. On-line folks said to go to "View - Studio - Character". Since I couldn't find anything saying it was the "View" Menu, I asked about that and was told to go to "Preferences - Keyboard Shortcuts - View" good grief, this was ridiculously opaque and again unfindable. With time ticking down for me, I asked where "Preferences" was located and was told to go to "Tools - Preferences". KMN because "Tools" proved unfindable also. Eventually I stumbled across a character menu, and found the slant option. I selected my text and tapped the slant box up to 5 degrees, and..... nothing changed. Is it because it's a trial? Well, if so, the developers failed. If they ever decide to offer straightforward menu routes to get to specific places without being psychic, and if the features then work, I'll be first in line to pay. FWIW, I'm a decades-long Painter expert, Photoshop & Lightroom expert, and InDesign expert. But not planning on becoming an Affinity expert until they stop with the "cool" mysterious act - because wow does that get old fast. And yeah, missed my deadline 🤐
Developer Response We are sorry to hear about your experience. We'd love to know more about any issues you may encounter and we have a support team that can be contacted affinitysupport@serif.com who can advice on issues you may have in the future.
I was in a hurry today. My current iPad Pro apps won't let me do quite what I need to do, at least not quickly. It sounded like Affinity Publisher could. All I needed to do was slant a font that I'm using in a graphic that I made in Procreate, and then rasterize it. Procreate doesn't have a faux italics option. Affinity Publisher theoretically allows you to slant the font though which I really truly needed to do. On-line folks said to go to "View - Studio - Character". Since I couldn't find anything saying it was the "View" Menu, I asked about that and was told to go to "Preferences - Keyboard Shortcuts - View" good grief, this was ridiculously opaque and again unfindable. With time ticking down for me, I asked where "Preferences" was located and was told to go to "Tools - Preferences". KMN because "Tools" proved unfindable also. Eventually I stumbled across a character menu, and found the slant option. I selected my text and tapped the slant box up to 5 degrees, and..... nothing changed. Is it because it's a trial? Well, if so, the developers failed. If they ever decide to offer straightforward menu routes to get to specific places without being psychic, and if the features then work, I'll be first in line to pay. FWIW, I'm a decades-long Painter expert, Photoshop & Lightroom expert, and InDesign expert. But not planning on becoming an Affinity expert until they stop with the "cool" mysterious act - because wow does that get old fast. And yeah, missed my deadline 🤐
We are sorry to hear about your experience. We'd love to know more about any issues you may encounter and we have a support team that can be contacted affinitysupport@serif.com who can advice on issues you may have in the future.
For 99% of us, 98% of the time, the iPad version of Affinity Publisher will be adequate. It does almost everything the desktop version does. Both do almost everything InDesign does, and usually better—faster and with fewer steps.I'd say the biggest drawback is the learning curve. The UI is initially confusing—everything's hidden behind a mystery icon, and there are more menus hidden within. The Affinity apps are monstrously powerful and it takes some time to learn all they can do.Where the iPad version will disappoint most users, I think, is it lacks data merge. So you can't automate, say, mailing labels or name badges. This means nothing to me but it might ruin it for you.Neither version, to my knowledge, can properly handle long tables. InDesign treats a table like a text frame and you just link your overflowing frame to another to continue the table flow. Publisher requires cumbrous workarounds.Nor does the iPad version work well for large or complex publications. There is no Book Panel. More importantly, say for publishing an indexed paper, there are only limited indexing functions.Any one of these flaws might make Publisher unusable for you. For most of us most of the time it's no big deal.To me it's a life changer. I can do layout on my iPad.
For 99% of us, 98% of the time, the iPad version of Affinity Publisher will be adequate. It does almost everything the desktop version does. Both do almost everything InDesign does, and usually better—faster and with fewer steps.I'd say the biggest drawback is the learning curve. The UI is initially confusing—everything's hidden behind a mystery icon, and there are more menus hidden within. The Affinity apps are monstrously powerful and it takes some time to learn all they can do.Where the iPad version will disappoint most users, I think, is it lacks data merge. So you can't automate, say, mailing labels or name badges. This means nothing to me but it might ruin it for you.Neither version, to my knowledge, can properly handle long tables. InDesign treats a table like a text frame and you just link your overflowing frame to another to continue the table flow. Publisher requires cumbrous workarounds.Nor does the iPad version work well for large or complex publications. There is no Book Panel. More importantly, say for publishing an indexed paper, there are only limited indexing functions.Any one of these flaws might make Publisher unusable for you. For most of us most of the time it's no big deal.To me it's a life changer. I can do layout on my iPad.
- Bug fixes and stability improvements.
More info in the 'News and Information' section of the Support Forums,
access forums via the Help menu.
2.6.4 09/23/2025
- Bug fixes and stability improvements.
More info in the 'News and Information' section of the Support Forums,
access forums via the Help menu.
2.6.3 05/14/2025
Affinity 2.6 brings exciting updates to Publisher, most notably Advanced Page Management features to help improve your workflow. Free for all V2 customers, this latest update includes:
• Multi-Page Spreads – spreads can now contain more than two pages, making it easy to create trifold, gatefold, accordion-fold and other page arrangements
• Page Reflow Control – new options including Reflow Pages, Reflow Through Spread and Spread Wrapping when adding pages help you manage your pages better
• Page migration improvements, including four new page move options: Anchor Toward Spine, Reapply Masters, Move Master Content and Split Masters
• Other general advanced page management improvements
• Color Picker improvements – when using the Color Picker on the Color Panel, your picked color will be automatically applied to the selected object, so you’re no longer required to select the color well
• Reading Order Panel – to improve the accessibility of PDFs produced in Affinity, this new panel gives you control over the order in which screen readers and other assistive technology read PDF content
• Many more improvements and bug fixes
2.6.2 04/02/2025
Affinity 2.6 brings exciting updates to Publisher, most notably Advanced Page Management features to help improve your workflow. Free for all V2 customers, this latest update includes:
• Multi-Page Spreads – spreads can now contain more than two pages, making it easy to create trifold, gatefold, accordion-fold and other page arrangements
• Page Reflow Control – new options including Reflow Pages, Reflow Through Spread and Spread Wrapping when adding pages help you manage your pages better
• Page migration improvements, including four new page move options: Anchor Toward Spine, Reapply Masters, Move Master Content and Split Masters
• Other general advanced page management improvements
• Color Picker improvements – when using the Color Picker on the Color Panel, your picked color will be automatically applied to the selected object, so you’re no longer required to select the color well
• Reading Order Panel – to improve the accessibility of PDFs produced in Affinity, this new panel gives you control over the order in which screen readers and other assistive technology read PDF content
• Many more improvements and bug fixes
2.6.1 02/27/2025
Affinity 2.6 brings exciting updates to Publisher, most notably Advanced Page Management features to help improve your workflow. Free for all V2 customers, this latest update includes:
• Multi-Page Spreads – spreads can now contain more than two pages, making it easy to create trifold, gatefold, accordion-fold and other page arrangements
• Page Reflow Control – new options including Reflow Pages, Reflow Through Spread and Spread Wrapping when adding pages help you manage your pages better
• Page migration improvements, including four new page move options: Anchor Toward Spine, Reapply Masters, Move Master Content and Split Masters
• Other general advanced page management improvements
• Color Picker improvements – when using the Color Picker on the Color Panel, your picked color will be automatically applied to the selected object, so you’re no longer required to select the color well
• Reading Order Panel – to improve the accessibility of PDFs produced in Affinity, this new panel gives you control over the order in which screen readers and other assistive technology read PDF content
• Many more improvements and bug fixes
2.6.0 02/19/2025
Bug fixes and stability improvements, including fixes for iPadOS 18.
For more information, please see the announcement on the Affinity forum.
2.5.7 12/11/2024
Bug fixes and stability improvements, including fixes for iPadOS 18.
For more details, see the Affinity forum announcement.
2.5.6 11/27/2024
Bug fixes and stability improvements.
2.5.5 09/02/2024
Bug fixes and stability improvements.
2.5.4 07/16/2024
Bug fixes and stability improvements.
2.5.3 06/24/2024
Bug fixes and stability improvements to 2.5.
Experience an improved workflow with Version 2.5! Free for all V2 customers, the latest update to Affinity Publisher introduces a few key features and improvements, including:
• Variable font support – allows you to work with fonts that provide fine-grained control of aspects of their appearance
• QR Code Tool – makes it easy to add QR codes to documents, which can be scanned to perform actions such as visiting a web page of your choice
• DWG polylines import improvements
• Many more improvements and bug fixes
2.5.2 06/04/2024
Experience an improved workflow with Version 2.5! Free for all V2 customers, the latest update to Affinity Publisher introduces a few key features and improvements, including:
• Variable font support – allows you to work with fonts that provide fine-grained control of aspects of their appearance
• QR Code Tool – makes it easy to add QR codes to documents, which can be scanned to perform actions such as visiting a web page of your choice
• DWG polylines import improvements
• Many more improvements and bug fixes
2.5 05/23/2024
Bug fixes and stability improvements.
2.4.2 04/08/2024
Compatibility and stability improvements.
2.4.1 03/26/2024
2.4 is here! Free for all V2 customers, the latest update to Affinity Publisher brings some key new features and improvements, including:
• Set selection box – choose default selection box from the ‘cycle selection box’ choices
• Double-tap an object while in Node Tool to switch to the Move Tool
• Ability to lock ‘Behind’, ‘Inside’ and ‘On Top’ insertion targets
• Spacebar modifier allows you to toggle ‘Lock Children’ behavior on/off while moving an object
• Space Horizontal / Vertical now considers key object – using even space distribution on a multiple selection will now behave differently if you have a key object nominated
• Size / Rotate objects to same – three new choices have been added in Alignment Options to make all items in your current selection adopt the same width, height or rotation
• 32-bit HDR PNG support added
• Many more improvements and bug fixes
2.4 02/28/2024
Bug fixes and stability improvements.
2.3.1 01/08/2024
Affinity Publisher 2.3 introduces some great new capabilities and improvements, including:
• Spiral Tool – embellish your designs with different types of spirals, including Linear, Decaying, Semi-circular, Fibonacci, and Plotted
• Pixel grid – expose a pixel grid when zoomed in beyond a certain threshold
• Create and place password-protected PDFs
• New Tags Panel for adding alt text to images and objects
• Ability to change Asset Panel background color
• Fields available in Find and Replace
• Many more improvements and bug fixes
2.3.0 11/30/2023
Bug fixes and stability improvements.
2.2.1 10/19/2023
Always evolving, always improving – Affinity Publisher 2.2 includes many new features, fixes, and improvements. Here’s what’s new in the award-winning app’s latest free update:
• Cross-references
-Use a paragraph, anchor or index mark as a cross-reference’s target
-Phrase cross-reference text as you wish, including subfields that automatically describe targets, e.g. their page
-Save cross-reference phrasings as presets for reuse in multiple documents
-Limit quoted text by number of words or occurrence of a character
-Automatically hyperlink cross-references to their targets when exporting interactive PDFs
• Define custom text variables as fields – this allows you to add new fields and assign whatever value to them you wish
• Option + click new layer now adds all items in your current selection to that new layer
• ‘Hide effects’ and ‘greyscale’ view mode options – you can toggle-on these new view modes using the buttons next to the View Mode options in the navigator
• Guides can now be changed to any color
• Long press tool shortcuts – holding onto any tool shortcut will now just put you in that tool temporarily until you release, at which point you will return to your previous tool
• Customizable date & time formats
• Open all supported image formats in all Personas
• ‘Find and Replace’ now includes scope and result count
• Option to go to previously viewed spread
• Additional options to provide increased control over the presentation of index entries – these include After Topic, Between Items, Between Ranges, Before References, After References, and After See (Also); commonly used special characters can also be easily inserted into your custom separator text
• Decimal place accuracy preferences
• ‘Prefer to keep selection’ preference
2.2.0 09/19/2023
[Fixed] - PDF imports with unsupported characters for the 'Subject' field, then fails to export out to PDF.
[Fixed] - Crash when enabling document Baseline Grid due to Running Headers on Master Pages.
[Fixed] - Crash applying a Paragraph Style to a Running Header within a small text frame.
[Fixed] - Non-breaking hyphens no longer draws, though does not affect ALL fonts.
[Fixed] - Crash adding pages into a facing page document with flowing text.
[Fixed] - Version number in iPad settings is full version number not just build.
[Fixed] - Stroke width cannot exceed 100 in any unit in Stroke Panel.
Help updates.
2.1.1 06/20/2023
• Running headers – create headers that change throughout your document
• Paste/insert inside a picture frame now inserts as picture frame child rather than being clipped by it
• Balance dashed lines for better results in corners
• New ‘Clear Arrowhead’ button added to Stroke Panel
• Assign shortcuts to blend modes
• Guides improvements
- Delta (difference from current position) is now shown in readout when you drag to move guides
- Holding Shift when dragging now snaps to ruler units
- Shift-Option when dragging now snaps the delta based on ruler units
- Option-drag to create a copy of a guide
- Dragging a new guide from rulers automatically turns guide visibility on
- Option-click guide to delete
- Double-click guide to open guide settings
• New search bar added to ‘My Add-ons’ in your account
• Square brackets now change stroke width in Shape and Node tools
• Control three dashes and gaps (rather than two) to allow for more complex dashed strokes (i.e., two dot chain)
• ‘Rename layer’ available as shortcut (Cmd+Shift+R)
• Drag to duplicate in Layers Panel by holding Option
• Click to expand/collapse all in the Layers Panel by using Option
• New left-swipe options on Layers Panel
- Change compound type
- Lock/Unlock
- Added ‘rename…’ option
• Blend mode and opacity now available at top of Layers Panel to avoid needing to dig into More menu
• Redesigned Edit menu now includes icons for insertion targets and isometric options
• ‘Add from Photos’ now uses iPadOS photo app browser
• ‘Show in Files’ available from Live Document burger menu – this will take you to the location of the file in question
• Style Picker Tool (nested within the Color Picker) – quickly copy style attributes from one object to another
• Various new keyboard shortcut options added, including zoom options (e.g., Cmd+0 for zoom to fit), show guides and grids, select next, previous, top and bottom (you can edit shortcuts from within Settings)
• Reset view rotation in navigator with double-tap
• Pencil double-tap can now be configured to open quick menu in Settings
• Long press a geometry operation (add, subtract, divide, etc.) to create a live compound
• Advanced PDF import options (e.g., to control text grouping, DPI, etc.)
• Modifiers now available for Select Object:
- Shift: add to current selection
- Option: subtract from current selection
- Shift+Option: select objects from within current selection
• Choose to hide layer type icon from Layer burger menu
• Main view rulers now available (from view menu – rulers)
2.1 05/18/2023
- Fixed Register your licence prompt appearing on every run up
- Fix a crash in scribble with a text selection
- Fixed sliders allowing values over 100% when it doesn’t make sense (e.g. opacity)
- Cannot reset stroke pressure as easily as before (using long press or tap)
- Fixed crash with sliding the Page Studio Button
- Fixed only non-Affinity LUT files being offered for import via the new batch Import Content feature
- Some image resources are being replaced by others from the same document when copy/paste was used to insert them
- Node Transform mode issues with moving multiple nodes and snapping on pages after page 1
- Text decoration "bottom" in wrong place
- StudioLink incompatible with licensing used for businesses
- Fixed non-ASCII characters not being accepted in license usernames
- Fix New Document sometimes showing Letter* instead of A4
- In Document Setup make the list of page presets select the right size for V1 documents
- Saving files may reduce file size in some circumstance
- Assorted stability fixes
- Help and Localisation updates
- Assorted other Licensing and Registration improvements
2.0.4 01/27/2023
- Trash can added bottom left for quick delete (command controller toggle now moved to burger menu)
- Clearer drop zone indication for dropping layers inside
- New document and open buttons on Home Screen now expand additional options by default (without needing to swipe down) to make them more easily discoverable
- New clearer icons for stroke properties (cap, join, align)
- afpackage fails to find Resources on Open
- Fixed spurious future version error under certain circumstances
- Unable to drag aftemplate and afpackage files into the app
- Allow opening afdesign / afphoto / afpub files as template
- Improvements with PDF Import and Layers
- Fixes for RTF import - font name discrepancies, fields in footnotes
- Update for HEIF importer
- Fixed lack of preflight warning on Print or Export
- Export Panel UI fixes
- Pen tool tweaks and fixes
- Split and Reverse missing from Node Tool
- Fixed some tool drawing issues relating to selections across spreads etc
- Hit box of scaled text could be incorrect
- Gradients on text strokes don't render unless the fill also has a gradient
- Fixes for line breaking in some odd cases with punctuation
- Merge runs of tabs using leaders
- Tweaks to fix some spurious behaviour on interaction with Apple Autocorrect
- Fixed hang that could occur composing vertical centre aligned text
- OpenType handling does not respect lookup flags such as IgnoreMarks
- Insert Filler Text does not work if not in text insertion mode
- Resource Manager updates
- Fixed various issues involving handling of placed document files
- Fixed crash on Replace Image
- Fixes for Drag Drop of Stock images
- Placed documents with bleed can fail to render the bleed correctly
- Command Controller positioning improvements
- Fixes for Display Scale Zoomed
- Many and various Layers Panel updates and fixes
- Master Page management improvements
- Fixed some view corruption issues when switching pages / master pages etc
- Status bar layout / clipping fixes
- Document grid fixes
- Context menu fixes
- Fixed Navigator in multi-spread views
- Fixed assigning shortcuts from a keyboard cover
- Select Same Name should only select objects with user supplied names
- Unable to open Guide or Grid settings after dismissing by tapping the canvas
- Localisation updates
2.0.3 12/19/2022
** Everything! **
2.0.2 11/18/2022
** Everything! **
2.0.1 11/09/2022
- Bug fixes and stability improvements.
More info in the 'News and Information' section of the Support Forums,
access forums via the Help menu.
more Version 2.6.4 09/23/2025
Data Not Collected The developer does not collect any data from this app.
