20 Ideas
Discover creative and practical ways to give your old iPad new life. From turning it into a smart home controller or security camera to creating a digital photo frame or kitchen assistant, these guides will help you repurpose your tablet instead of letting it gather dust. Whether you’re interested in productivity, entertainment, education, or home automation, you’ll find step-by-step instructions for transforming your iPad into a useful tool. And if you decide not to keep it, learn about responsible options for donating, selling, or recycling your device.
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A Wall-Mounted Remote for Your Whole House If you already have smart home devices — a Nest thermostat, some Hue lights, a Ring doorbell, smart plugs — you’re controlling them through apps on your phone. Which means pulling out your…
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Too Slow for Modern Games. Perfect for the Good Ones. Your old iPad can’t run Genshin Impact. But it runs classic and retro games — the ones that were designed for hardware a fraction as powerful — without breaking a…
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Why an Old iPad Is Perfect for Kids Here’s what I’ve learned about kids and electronics: they will drop it. They will spill juice on it. They will somehow manage to download 47 apps in the time it takes you…
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Put Your Phone in Another Room Using your phone as an alarm clock is a trap. You set the alarm, then check Instagram “for one minute,” and suddenly it’s midnight. In the morning, you dismiss the alarm and immediately start…
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Two Hours Into a Road Trip, You’ll Be Glad You Did This Long car rides with kids require one of two things: exceptional patience or a screen. If you’re two hours into a road trip answering “are we there yet?”…
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Skip the Kindle. You Already Have One. Your old iPad has a bigger, higher-resolution, full-color screen than a Kindle. It connects to your library’s digital collection for free. It runs Kindle, Kobo, Apple Books, and every other reading app at…
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More Screen Space for $0 A second monitor changes how you work. Email on one screen, your main task on the other. Reference material beside your document. Slack visible without alt-tabbing. A decent standalone monitor costs $150-300. Your old iPad,…
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Your Phone Doesn’t Belong Near the Stove Let’s be honest about what happens when you cook with your phone: you unlock it with wet hands. The screen goes dark mid-recipe. You get a text and lose your place. Someone calls.…
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Why Your Old iPad Beats a Dedicated Photo Frame There’s an entire industry built around selling you digital photo frames for $80-200. Meanwhile, your old iPad — sitting in a drawer, too slow for modern apps — has a screen…
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See Your Cameras Without Picking Up Your Phone If you have security cameras — Ring, Wyze, Nest, Arlo — you’re checking them on your phone. Which means unlocking, opening the app, waiting for the feed to load, then putting it…