Short answer
A good cross stitch app keeps your place in a chart so you don't have to. It opens the PDF pattern you bought, lets you light up one thread colour at a time, marks off each stitch as you sew it, and reopens exactly where you stopped, on your iPad or your phone. Paper highlighters and pencil ticks do the same job, but they can't be undone, can't be searched and don't follow you to another device. Judge any app on those four jobs, then try it for one evening with a chart you already own before you pay.
The four jobs of a pattern app
Most charts are a grid of symbols, one symbol per thread colour, printed across several pages with a heavier line every ten squares. Everything an app does for you falls into one of four jobs:
| Job | On paper | What the app should do |
|---|---|---|
| Hold the chart | Pages taped together, a photocopy you can mark | Show the whole chart as one grid you can pinch and pan, even when it is tens of thousands of stitches |
| Find the next stitch | Squinting for one symbol among twenty | Tap a thread in the key and every stitch of that colour you still owe lights up |
| Record what you sewed | Highlighter or pencil, no undo | A tap or a drag marks cells; undo is always there; nothing marks by accident |
| Keep your place | A magnet board and a good memory | Zoom, position and marks are saved as you go and open in the same spot next time |
If an app does the first job well and the other three badly, it is a PDF reader, not a pattern app.
Ten things to check before you pay
Read the store page, the privacy details and the support page with these in mind:
- Does it read your own PDFs? You bought the chart from a designer. The app should open it from Files, the share sheet or Mail, not ask you to buy patterns again inside it.
- What happens when it can't read a cell? Charts vary. A trustworthy app shows you where it was unsure, so you can check before you stitch, rather than filling the grid with its best guess.
- Can it handle a scan? Some charts only exist on paper or as a scanned PDF with no text in it. Look for a way to line a grid up over the page image.
- Can you highlight one colour? This is the feature you will use most. Check that the rest of the chart dims, so the highlighted stitches stand out.
- Is there undo, and a lock? A chart propped next to the hoop gets brushed by fabric and wrists. You want undo for slips, and a way to stop marking while you still pan and zoom.
- Does it show progress per colour? Knowing you have 40 stitches of one green left helps you plan the next skein and the next evening.
- Does it remember where you were? Close the app mid-row, reopen it. Same zoom, same spot?
- Where does your chart go? Your pattern is another person's work and your progress is your own. Look for an app that keeps both on your device or in your own cloud, with no account to create.
- How is it paid for? A subscription, a one-time price, or ads. Know which before your first project is half done in it.
- Can you get your work out? A backup file you can save means a lost or replaced iPad doesn't cost you months of marks.
The first-evening test
A trial is only useful if you test the hard parts. Pick a chart you already own and are about to start, not the simplest one in your stash. Then, in one evening:
| Step | What to do | Pass if |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Import | Open the PDF in the app | The grid size and the thread list match the cover page of the chart |
| 2. Check | Look at what the app flagged as unsure | It tells you where and why, or it flagged nothing and you can't find an error |
| 3. Highlight | Pick the colour you will start with | Every stitch of it lights up, across every page of the chart |
| 4. Stitch | Sew for an hour, marking as you go | Marking takes one tap, and you never mark a stitch by brushing the screen |
| 5. Leave | Close the app without saving anything | Next evening it opens on the same stitch |
A worked example, with numbers you can swap for your own: a chart of 120 by 90 squares has 10,800 cells. Say 9,000 of them are stitched, in 24 colours, and you sew about 150 stitches an evening. That is 60 evenings; at three evenings a week, about five months. Every one of those 60 evenings starts with "where was I?" The app has to answer that in a second, every time, for months. One evening of testing is a small price for that.
Where Flossva fits
Flossva is a pattern tracker for iPad and iPhone, built around those four jobs.
- Your own PDFs: import from Files, the share sheet, or by dropping a PDF on the library on iPad. Paper and scanned charts work too: scan them with the camera, and Flossva looks for the printed grid and proposes where it sits for you to check.
- Its doubts, shown: after import you see the size of the chart, the thread list and any cell it is unsure of, tinted with a plain reason. It never fills in a cell it isn't sure of.
- One colour at a time: tap a thread in the legend and every stitch of it you still have to sew lights up while the rest dims. The chart is one continuous grid, even past 50,000 stitches.
- Marking: tap or drag across cells; Undo is always on screen. The marking lock stops accidental marks while you can still pan and zoom. Press and hold a cell to park it as your return point.
- Your place, kept: zoom, position and highlight are saved as you go and sync through your own iCloud, so your phone opens to the same stitch.
- Private by design: no account, no Flossva server, no analytics. Your charts and progress never reach us. The privacy policy has the details.
- How it is paid for: 7 days with every feature, free, then US$19.99 once. No subscription. After the trial you can still open your projects and export backups.
The steps for each of these are on the support page.
Questions
Is there a cross stitch app for iPad?
Yes, several, and the iPad is the best screen for one: it is big enough to hold a chart at a readable size next to your hoop. Look for one that reads the PDF charts you already own and works with Apple Pencil as well as your finger.
Can I use the same app on my iPhone too?
Many work on both. The thing to check is whether your progress moves with you: the same project, the same marks and the same spot on both devices, without you exporting anything.
Can an app read a paper or scanned chart?
A scan is a picture, so no app can read its symbols the way it reads a text PDF. The usual answer is to line a grid up over the page image and mark on top of it. With Flossva you scan the paper with the camera, check the corners and the row and column counts it proposes (count the small squares, not the bold blocks of ten), then mark as normal and add each thread as you meet it.
Is it all right to put a pattern I bought into an app?
Read the designer's terms first: they say what you may do with the file. Whatever app you use, keep the project to yourself and don't share the file or a backup of it. The pattern is the designer's work, and an app that keeps everything on your own device and iCloud helps you keep it that way.