Apple has made all iLife and iWork apps free

All applications from the iWork office suite and the iLife suite for audio and video processing have become free, noted MacRumors. Previously, these apps ranged from $4.99 to $19.99.

iWork is Apple's version of Microsoft Office for macOS and iOS, and includes the Pages text editor, Numbers spreadsheet editor, and Keynote presentation tool. iLife used to include three apps—the music editor GarageBand, the video editor iMovie, and the photo editor iPhoto—but the latter was replaced by Photos, which came free with macOS (also free).

Since 2013, iLife and iWork became free for buyers of new devices and came pre-installed on iPhones and iPads with large built-in memory. Everyone else, however, needed to buy apps: While GarageBand for macOS cost $4.99, iMovie and each of the iWork apps cost $19.99. In iOS, prices for office applications were two times lower.

Now all applications can be downloaded for free by all users, regardless of whether they bought a new device or not. However, their device must support fairly new versions of operating systems: for example, in the case of iWork, macOS 10.12 and later or iOS 10.0 and later are required.

Apple has not yet announced anywhere that it has made all applications free. However, on April 18, a message appeared on the technical support website that schools collaborating with Apple under the Volume Purchase Program will be able to download free versions of applications from iWork and iPhoto even more easily. Apple representatives were unavailable for comment.

App links: Pages ( macOS , iOS ), Numbers ( macOS , iOS ), Keynote ( macOS , iOS ), GarageBand ( macOS , iOS ), iMovie ( macOS , iOS ).