I (Sam) love jigsaw puzzles. I especially love big ones: the kind where you settle in, sort out the edges, work on little sections, and watch the whole picture come together. I like doing physical puzzles, but haven’t had time for that lately, so I have been doing a lot on my iPad. I like listening to audiobooks and puzzling…
What I don’t like is trying to relax with a puzzle app and being interrupted by ads, subscriptions, pop-ups, videos, or constant attempts to sell me something.
So we built PuzzleBuddy. Alex had already made ChessBuddy (And now PokerBuddy and FreeCellBuddy too!) and I wanted to see if I could make a “Buddy” Game myself. And I did it! Alex helped me design the pieces, but the rest I did myself, with the help of coding agents (no outsourcing to people in other countries, I did it all myself..)
PuzzleBuddy is a free jigsaw puzzle app for iPhone and iPad designed around a pretty simple idea: the puzzle should be the focal point.
There are no ads, no subscriptions, no in-app purchases, no account to create, and no tracking. You can just open it and do a puzzle, whenever you want. It saves where you left off and you can save up to five at a time.
This is a jigsaw puzzle app for people who actually like jigsaw puzzles!
One of the things that mattered to us was making PuzzleBuddy feel like solving a real jigsaw rather than playing a mobile game that happens to contain puzzle pieces.
You can choose from 516 included puzzles across 14 collections, with puzzle sizes ranging from 36 pieces all the way up to 400 pieces.
And if none of those are what you’re in the mood for, you can turn your own photos into puzzles, too.
I particularly wanted the larger puzzles to be enjoyable on an iPad. Once you’re working with hundreds of pieces, little things suddenly matter: where do you put everything? How do you find the edges? How do you keep the board from becoming complete chaos?
PuzzleBuddy includes tools for that, including sorting for edge and inside pieces, a pull-up piece tray, Image Guide, Assist, and Sweep. They’re there when you want them, but they don’t turn solving the puzzle into a game full of scores, timers, streaks, or pressure.
No ads really does mean no ads
This deserves its own section because apparently “free” has become a surprisingly complicated word in apps.
PuzzleBuddy is completely free. Not free if you watch ads. FREE
There isn’t an ad waiting after the next puzzle. There isn’t a subscription required to unlock the good pictures. There isn’t a premium tier hiding the larger puzzle sizes. There aren’t in-app purchases.
It’s just free.
We wanted to make something calm—an app you can pick up when you have ten minutes, or settle into for a much longer 400-piece puzzle.
It also works offline, so once you have PuzzleBuddy on your device, you don’t need an internet connection just to sit down and solve.
Why “PuzzleBuddy”?
Because that’s really what I wanted it to feel like.
Not a competition. Not another app demanding that you maintain a streak. Not something trying to get your attention every five seconds.
Just a little companion you can open when you want to shut everything else out for a while and put some pieces together.
And yes, I play it myself. Every day… 😊
PuzzleBuddy is available free for iPhone and iPad on the App Store. Check it out! Let me know if there is anything you think I should add to the next update!! – Samantha Dobbs
Learn more about PuzzleBuddy →
Download PuzzleBuddy on the App Store →
***Update — October 3 2026: PuzzleBuddy 1.2 is now available, with puzzle search and a new 576-piece Legendary size.
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