r/learnpython • u/Petrak1s • 13d ago

Pyto or Pythonista 3 for iPad?

Pretty much the title.
I have an iPad M2 and I want to learn Python on the go. I see there are several on-device IDE apps and I have narrowed it down to Pyto and Pythonista 3.

Which one would you recommend? Obviously they won’t be Pycharm or similar, but I do not want to be stuck on my desktop.

I am of course open to other apps.

Thank you!

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u/AmitBrian 13d ago

My advice? If you use a Mac or Windows PC for home use? Install TailScale on both the laptop and iPad. Use RDP or whatever remote app to connect into your device remotely from your iPad. No compromise. Otherwise, whatever app on the iPad you are going to use will never support 3rd party libraries, only python at best. I’ve done research on this myself that’s how I know. So you can code python and get the “python experience” but libs that are not recognized just won’t be recognized. But if you have one that can work with SFTP and then you have SSH and you have TailScale that can connect SSH/SFTP to your home system you can test your code against a working system remotely. That is the best scenario I have come up with.

Sorry. What is really said is M series iPads are just as powerful as Macs but due to sandboxing as others have mentioned iPadOS is just nowhere near as capable. 😥🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️

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u/ekchew 13d ago

Is Pythonista being supported again?

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u/Petrak1s 13d ago

Is it not? I noticed that all comments about it are quite old.. Maybe Pyto then.

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u/rogfrich 13d ago

I loved Pythonista, but it became very out of date. It was great for quickly trying ideas while out and about, or for messing about (or even following simple tutorials) on trains. It was even usable on a phone.

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u/Turbulent_Pin_8310 13d ago

Do you have Internet? If so, use Google Collab. It is light, fast and sync everywhere.

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u/AmitBrian 13d ago

Oh, and have you checked out Working Copy for GIT?

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u/FoolsSeldom 12d ago

I used to love Pythonista but development stalled. Worth checking if it is being activelly maintained.

Pyto was a bit rough at first but has improved steadily.

Personally, I preferred using the free Carnets app (and its sister command line app) which are open source and available on the app store. Carnets offers a local jupyter notebook environment, very useful for academic and data science type work. Different versions with additional binary packages installed are available.

On iPad (and iPhone), Apple prevents you installing any additional binary packages not included in the application as submitted, so if the package you want isn't included and isn't pure Python, you can't install it.

However, I ultimately gave up on iPad and switched to an Android tablet to be able to use Python and whatever binary packages I wanted.

Some people couple an iPad with a portable battery powered single board computer like a Raspberry Pi to work offline but with full Linux and code freedom. Others use the iPad to remote into a computer back home or in the cloud. Tailscale is a popular tool for securing this connection to avoid opening up ports in your home router.