Best Magic Trick Apps for Android and iPhone

Magic apps come in two kinds. Some teach you tricks to do with your own hands, a deck of cards or a coin. The others are the trick: the phone is the prop, and the app does the secret part while you do the talking. Decide which kind you are after first, because the prices have little in common.

We went through the Google Play and App Store listings of the apps this article named in 2019, and of the ones that come up now when you search either store for magic tricks. Prices are the ones shown in the US stores and will differ where you live. Each trick is described the way its own listing describes it, so nothing below gives a method away.

Magic apps compared

Apps that teach you magic

52Kards is where to start. Its listing promises hundreds of free magic tutorial videos, next to a shop for designer playing cards. Google Play shows no ads label and nothing to buy inside the app, and the App Store version is free with no in-app purchases either. The shop is the commercial side of it, and Apple files the app under Shopping. One oddity for parents: Apple rates it 18+, while Google Play rates it Everyone.

Master Magic Tricks is a video library from Magic Makers. The App Store listing counts 4,000 instructional videos covering card tricks, mind-reading and illusions. The app is free to install and the full library needs a subscription. On its own website the price is $12.97 a month or $99.97 a year, after a 7-day free trial. Twelve months at the monthly rate come to $155.64, so the yearly plan saves $55.67. The listing warns that prices inside the app vary by region.

Learn Magic Tricks: Easy & Fun lists more than 1,000 tutorials on sleight of hand, cards, coins and mentalism, with step-by-step guides and lessons that work offline. On Google Play it is free with ads and in-app purchases, and the listing names Riafy Technologies as the company behind the Rstream Labs account. On iPhone the same company sells it as Magic Tricks – Learn & Master.

Conjuro does not make its own lessons. Its listing says it gathers free tutorial videos from around the internet and sorts them into courses, from card grips and shuffles to coin vanishes and mentalism, with levels and daily challenges to keep you practising. That sorting is the product. It is on Google Play, free with ads and in-app purchases.

Marvin’s Magic is only for people who own one of the company’s boxed magic sets. You scan the QR code in the instruction booklet to register the set, and the app adds video instructions and augmented reality effects for the props in the box.

One to skip for now: Penguin Magic’s Teach Me a Magic Trick is free with in-app purchases on both stores, but its listing is two sentences long and never says what you get.

Apps that do the trick for you

These are props. You still have to perform, and each one comes with instructions from its maker.

iForce is the cheap way in, at $2.99 on Google Play and the App Store. In the listing’s example you ask someone to think of their favourite food, doodle a prediction on the phone and leave it face down. When they say “sushi”, you turn the phone over and that is what you drew. To anyone watching it looks like a plain drawing app.

Magic Notes (Android, $3.99) passes as a note-taking app. You type a prediction, put the phone down, and it matches the number, card, coin toss or star sign the other person comes up with. A tutorial is built in.

Rising Card (iPhone, $2.99) is a single effect. A friend names any card, shakes the phone, and that card rises out of a photo of a deck. Card2Phone (iPhone, $4.99) is sold as visual magic, with 52 playing card faces, more than 70 card backs and 62 currencies to choose from. A Pro upgrade inside it adds everyday objects.

There are free ones too. Magic Trick – Mind Reading by Itai Levi has no ads label and nothing to buy on Google Play. A spectator swipes through cards and stops on any one, and you know which.

Then come the tools that working magicians buy. Inject, listed on the App Store as Inject-Magic, is free to download, and its 21 effects sit behind an in-app purchase. What sets it apart is that the effect happens on the spectator’s own phone. In one example from the listing, they point to any name on a list of 20 celebrities and find that the search you made on their phone earlier was for that person. It needs an internet connection, and the listing notes that the right to perform it on television is not included.

AnyWeb describes itself as a magic browser for performing what magicians call forces, on any website or app. Both listings state the price in plain words: a free download, then $59.99 to unlock it.

WikiTest costs $109.99 on the App Store. Someone looks up anything they like on Wikipedia on their own phone and thinks of a word on the page, and you name both the subject and the word. There is an optional Pro Tools subscription on top, listed at $5.49 a month. At that price it only makes sense if you perform for people regularly.

Which one to pick

• You want to learn and pay nothing: 52Kards.
• You want a large library and will pay for it: Master Magic Tricks. Take the 7-day trial first, and go yearly only once you know you will keep using it.
• A child with a Marvin’s Magic set: the Marvin’s Magic app, since it is built around the props in the box.
• One trick for a party, on any phone: iForce at $2.99.
• The same, on an iPhone only: Rising Card.
• You perform for audiences: Inject or WikiTest. Read the whole listing and watch the maker’s demonstration before paying.

If you would rather watch than perform, we also have a list of magician specials on Netflix.

What happened to the old list

52Kards is still here. Inject was “Inject 2” when we first wrote about it. It is on the App Store under the name Inject-Magic, and it is not on Google Play: the developer’s page there lists only iForce and another app called ReaList.

Magic Tricks by Mikael Montier has gone from both stores. Its old Google Play and App Store addresses now return a “not found” page.

The 2019 list also counted Kindle and YouTube as magic apps. Books and videos are a fine way to learn, but neither is a magic app, so they are out.

Quick answers

Is there a free app to learn magic tricks?

Yes. 52Kards is free on Google Play and the App Store, with no ads label and no in-app purchases. Learn Magic Tricks and Conjuro are free with ads.

What is a good magic trick app for iPhone?

Rising Card and iForce cost $2.99 each and suit beginners. Inject and WikiTest are aimed at performers and cost far more.

Is there a magic trick app for Android?

iForce and Magic Notes are paid apps on Google Play at $2.99 and $3.99. Magic Trick – Mind Reading is free.

Is there an app that can really read minds?

No. Every “mind reading” app here is a trick you perform. Inject’s own listing says it is for entertainment and does not provide true mind reading.

Can I get Inject on Android?

Not from its maker. Rostami Magic’s page on Google Play has iForce and ReaList, and no Inject.