The 2021 guide to coding on an iPad Pro
In 2019, I wrote a guide to coding web apps on the iPad Pro — which was finally feasible for the first time albeit slightly fiddly— but since then it’s gotten significantly easier to code on the iPad, thanks to a new wave of development tools and improvements to Apple’s Safari browser on iPadOS.
Coding on the iPad Pro, in my opinion, is the holy grail: with ultra-fast always-on 5G connectivity and all day battery, I’d rather throw my iPad in my backpack and leave my laptop at home. Often, however, I needed to be able to code on the go so would end up bringing both.
While you still can’t download my favorite code editor, Visual Studio Code, directly to the iPad, Microsoft has made the next best thing available: GitHub Codespaces.
Codespaces is a fully cloud-based version of the Visual Studio Code you’re likely already familiar with, complete with virtual servers, so you can actually build and test your code — without needing to jump through hoops. And, best of all it’s completely free (at least for individual accounts, for now).
Codespaces has come a lot further than the hack I used to rely on back in 2019 to code on the iPad, and combined with the iPad Magic Keyboard, which features a trackpad and makes it a lot easier to jump around within files, coding on the iPad has moved from fiddly but workable…
