5 Apps To Learn Magic And Card Tricks

Admit it — you still get mindblown every time you come across a street magician performing yet another seemingly impossible trick. And honestly, who doesn't? They always make you scratch your head and pull your hair out, thinking of how they inserted a phone into a bottle or pulled a spectator's very randomly picked card out of their deck.

Just watching these magicians perform sometimes makes you want to become a magician yourself, perhaps as a career or just to impress family and friends. The good news is that you actually can and, for the most part, free of charge. There are tutorials on YouTube and TikTok you can turn to, but if you're looking for an app dedicated solely to magic, you can find a couple of them on the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. To make it easier for you to get started, we've covered five of the best free apps for iPhone and Android that you can download and start using now.

With over a million downloads on the Google Play Store, Learn Magic Tricks: Easy & Fun is easily one of the go-to magic tutorial apps for Android, and rightfully so. It supports three skill levels (Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced) to accommodate your current proficiency, all while giving you access to higher-level content once you're ready for the challenge.

When it comes to tricks, Learn Magic Tricks features over 1,000 tutorials across four magic types (card, coin, hand, and illusion). That means you can find an array of tricks, from beginner ones like making a pen vanish and reappear to advanced tricks like drawing a spectator's chosen card from a shuffled deck. You can also easily search for what you want to learn as the app neatly organizes the tutorials into categories like food, levitation, and matchbox tricks. If, however, you don't want to sort through all the tutorials yourself, there's a Course section that can walk you through different tricks lesson by lesson. Another cool feature of Learn Magic Tricks is streaks. Sort of like Duolingo, it encourages you to watch a video every day and gives you rewards as you complete more tutorials.

Most of the tutorials in the app are curated from your favorite magician YouTubers, and you can readily switch over to their YouTube channel right from the app if you wish. It's important to keep in mind that while the app is free to download and use, it does have full-screen ads that pop out randomly. You have to subscribe to the premium version to remove the ads and get access to other features like personalized content and widgets.

Card tricks are arguably one of the most popular genres of magic tricks, and if you're primarily interested in them more than anything else, then 52Kards might be the app for you. It's offered by a YouTuber by the same name, who provides card trick tutorials for budding magicians. The app has about 150 free videos, categorized into beginner, medium, and advanced tricks, and can be filtered further into effects, flourishes, and sleight-of-hand techniques. While there are a couple of non-card tricks featured here, most of the tutorials cover card tricks, including the one-hand Flippant Color Change (a card is replaced by another of a different color) and the Dai Vernon Triumph (a chaotic half-up, half-down deck is magically rearranged so that all the cards face down except for the spectator's card). Along with the tricks themselves, you can find basic tips for handling cards as well. There's a tutorial on doing the overhand and riffle shuffle and another on memorizing the order of your cards. If you sign up for a free account, you also gain access to the more structured, in-depth courses, some of which are free to enroll in.

On top of educational content, 52Kards doubles as a shop, too. It offers specialty playing cards, magic kits, magic apps to spark your creative talents, and card accessories (e.g., deck wallet, display shelf, organizer). You can install 52Kards from the Play Store or App Store at no cost at all, and it's ad-free. A downside, though, is its limited number of tutorials.

Available on both the Play Store and App Store, Master Magic Tricks is the ultimate resource for learning all sorts of magic acts. It features an impressive collection of at least 3,000 video tutorials led by expert magicians from across the globe, like actor and magician Larry Anderson, card-shark Simon Lovell, and master magician Ichiro Akari. Despite the huge library of videos, you won't have a hard time navigating the app as it comes with dedicated sections for popular tricks and featured compilations. There are separate sections for cards, coins, and mentalism tricks and others for compilations like Royal Road to Card Magic: Volume 1 and The Amazing Series.

Although most of the content in the app is locked behind a subscription, there are still some tutorials you can watch for free. This includes 100 Incredible Card Tricks (15 videos, about eight hours long), The Kinetic Card (10 videos, over 15 minutes long), and Quick and Easy Triumph (three videos, about five minutes long). If you're looking to test Master Magic Tricks before committing to a subscription, these are excellent tutorials you can start with. What you'll also love about Master Magic Tricks is its YouTube-like features that let you bookmark content for easy access and download videos for offline viewing. However, you must create an account and subscribe to either the monthly or annual plan to use these two features.

Marvin's Magic is the companion app for the magic products offered by international brand Marvin's Magic. It's essentially a digital guide that provides video instructions on using and performing tricks with your Marvin's Magic sets and individual props (e.g., coins, lights, cards, wands). All you have to do is scan the product's QR code and select the trick you want to practice from the library of tutorials specific to that item. Aside from hosting full video instructions, the app also lets you add a dash of modern technology to your magic performances. There's a section where you can access Augmented Reality tricks for your props, such as making a rabbit virtually appear out of your real-life magician's hat. You can also find interactive magic tricks in the Marvin's Magic app. One such act allows you to shake the app icons out of your phone and into your palm, while another involves burning a card virtually to reveal a new card and then pulling that card out of your phone.

If you don't own any Marvin's Magic products, the app can still come in handy as it features a Magic Academy. This collection of tutorials is taught by professional magicians at Marvin's Magic and covers a range of educational content like card and money tricks, handy tips and secrets, and impromptu illusions. Although the entire Academy is only accessible via subscription, you can watch a free tutorial every week. Most of the lessons also use typical magic props, so you won't necessarily have to buy Marvin's Magic-specific items.

Getting access to hundreds of card tricks in a single app is great, but if you're just dipping your toes into the world of card magic, it can also be pretty overwhelming. To lessen the burden of having to choose which lessons to begin and focus on, you can always start small with Card Magic Tricks And Tutorial. This app is designed to teach you only basic card tricks, no more, no less. It comes with just ten tutorials, including the Four Thieves, The Floating Card, and Deal a Royal Flush. This means you can get going with your learning journey immediately, with no unnecessary holdups from the get-go.

Unlike other magic apps, Card Magic Tricks And Tutorial doesn't have video instructions. Instead, you get a written step-by-step guide with photos to help you understand the guide better. All the tutorials are designed with beginners in mind — they don't go over ten steps each, making them pretty easy to follow. The best part about Card Magic Tricks and Tutorials is that it's absolutely free, and you won't have to deal with annoying ads. The only downside, apart from it being exclusive to Android devices, is that it doesn't have any intermediate or advanced tricks. After mastering the basics, you'd have to look elsewhere to broaden your skillset.