# Codea

> Creative coding

Canonical page: [https://chrome-stats.com/d/id439571171](https://chrome-stats.com/d/id439571171)

## Overview

- **ID:** `id439571171`
- **Platform:** Apple
- **Type:** Apple app
- **Status:** Available
- **Publisher:** Two Lives Left
- **Category:** Productivity
- **Rating:** 4.50 / 5 (126 ratings)
- **Version:** 3.17
- **Last updated:** 2026-05-05
- **First published:** 2011-10-26
- **Size:** 217 MB
- **Data as of:** 2026-09-24
- **Store listing:** [Apple App Store](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/codea/id439571171)
- **Website:** [https://codea.io](https://codea.io/)
- **Privacy policy:** [https://codea.io/privacy](https://codea.io/privacy)

## Description

Codea is the Garage-Band-for-coding on iPad, a touch-first Lua editor that makes it effortless to turn ideas into interactive visuals. It ships with a full 2D/3D renderer, live shader support, physics engines, accelerometer input, and a library of example projects to learn from.

Tap and tweak colors, images, and sounds directly in the editor, export finished projects to Xcode for real apps, and access inline reference docs for quick coding. It’s designed to be approachable yet powerful for creative coding, education, and game development.

## Rankings

- #125,768 — Overall
- #41 — coding

## Review summary

Reviewers praise Codea as a unique, well-supported Lua IDE that runs on iPad with a near-end-to-end development workflow via Xcode export and App Store publishing, plus offline docs and examples. The app shines in editor quality, learning value, and community support. Recurring drawbacks include crashes and stability issues, a relatively steep upfront price, editing/Pencil UX changes that hinder selection and copy-paste, and a Lua-centric language focus that may limit alternatives.

### Pros

- End-to-end Lua development on iPad with Xcode export and App Store publishing capabilities.
- Offline reference guide and rich set of example projects with solid documentation.
- Active, supportive community and ongoing maintenance by the developers.
- Powerful, capable editor/IDE with the ability to iterate and port to Mac/Xcode for full workflow.

### Cons

- Stability issues: multiple reports of crashes, including editor crashes and random crashes on updates.
- High upfront price / perceived cost for the feature set.
- Editor/Apple Pencil UX: loss of selection/copy-paste features and new writing-focused editing behavior.
- Limited language support: Lua-centric; confusion about using Python or other languages.
- Some iPhone polish/UI quirks noted by users.

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Source: [Chrome-Stats](https://chrome-stats.com/d/id439571171)