Coloring Games: Color & Paint

Review by eFreeware

If you have a toddler or preschooler and you are looking for something calm and creative for them to do on a phone or tablet, Coloring Games from RV AppStudios is the sort of app that lands in your lap at the right moment. It is a free coloring book and drawing app designed for children, and the developer describes it as suitable for kids from about a year old upward. That is the audience I would keep in mind: very young children who want to swipe, tap and make colors appear, plus the parents sitting next to them.

What it offers is a set of coloring and painting activities rather than one single canvas. There are five modes, ranging from simple tap-to-fill pages to color-by-numbers and a neon pen that draws on a dark background. For a parent, the appeal is that the whole thing is free, there are no ads and no in-app purchases, so you can hand over the device without worrying about what your child will tap into next.

The install numbers back up how widely this approach has been adopted: more than 100 million installs and a 4.4 average from over 118,000 ratings. I would not read those figures as proof of quality on their own, but they do suggest that a lot of families have found it usable enough to keep around. It has been on the Play Store since November 2019, which is a long time in the world of children's apps.

Five ways to put color on the screen

The core loop in Coloring Games is about as direct as it gets. A child picks a picture, chooses a color and taps or drags to fill it in. Fun Paint, the simplest mode, lets children tap a blank page and pick from roughly twelve bright colors. That is the mode I would expect a one- or two-year-old to gravitate toward, because there is no precision required. Tap, color appears, move on.

Color Fill widens the toolkit. Here the developer includes stickers, glitter, crayons and patterns alongside a broader range of colors, so the activity becomes less about filling a shape and more about decorating it. This is the mode that would suit a child who has outgrown plain tap-to-fill and wants to add flourishes.

Drawing strips things back to a blank slate with a full palette, which means whatever ends up on screen comes entirely from the child. Glow Pen works on a dark background with neon colors, and the developer pitches it as a way to make unusual artwork. Number Paint goes the other way, using color-by-numbers so that each shade is applied one at a time until a finished picture emerges. Between the five, there is a reasonable spread from pure free play to guided, structured coloring.

Where the structure comes from

The progression in this app is not a level map or a scoring system. It is the shift between modes and the difficulty settings the developer provides for adults. You can set up a profile for each child, which matters in a household with more than one young kid, and you can adjust the settings to make the coloring activities easier or harder. That is the closest thing to a difficulty curve here, and it is a sensible one for the age group: the challenge is tuned by the parent rather than earned by the player.

I would expect the natural path to be Fun Paint first, then Color Fill once the child wants more variety, with Drawing and Glow Pen as open-ended options for days when they would rather invent something than complete a page. Number Paint sits slightly apart, since it asks for a bit more patience and attention to matching shades.

Because the app is aimed at such young children, I would not look for long-term progression hooks. The value is in repeatable, low-stakes sessions, and the mode variety is what keeps those sessions from feeling identical.

Free means free here

The monetization is the part of this app that stands out most. Coloring Games is free to download, it contains no ads, and there are no in-app purchases. The developer, describing the team as parents themselves, says the aim was to keep family playtime free of ads and paywalls. The app carries no ads and no purchases.

For anyone who has handed a tablet to a small child and watched an ad appear mid-activity, this is the detail that matters most. There is nothing to buy, nothing to unlock with money and no advertising to tap through. What you see on install is what the app is.

I would treat that as the headline feature rather than a footnote. Plenty of children's apps are free to start and then ask for money somewhere down the line; this one does not.

The families this fits

This is an app for households with toddlers and preschoolers, and for the adults who supervise them. If you want a screen activity that produces something colorful without requiring reading, instructions or a learning curve, the tap-to-fill modes cover that. The interface is described as simple enough for children as young as one year old to use, which tells you how little is being asked of the player.

It also works as a shared activity. The developer frames it as something families can do together, and the profile system supports that idea if more than one child wants their own space. Grandparents, babysitters or anyone else supervising a young child would find the same thing useful: a self-contained art activity with no purchases to accidentally trigger.

I would set expectations around what kind of entertainment this is. It is not a game with goals, characters or rewards, and older children who want a challenge will likely lose interest quickly. The modes are creative tools for young kids, and that is the whole of it.

What to weigh before installing

The main consideration is age. Everything here is built for very young children, and the appeal narrows sharply as kids get older. A seven- or eight-year-old who wants a drawing app with layers, brushes and export options will find this too basic. That is not a flaw in the app so much as a description of its scope.

The second consideration is that this is a coloring book, not a teaching program. It sits in the Educational category and the activities are described as learning games, but the substance is coloring, drawing and color matching. It suits young children who want to color, draw and match colors.

Finally, the app has been updated regularly, with the most recent update dated September 29, 2026. That suggests ongoing attention from the developer, which is reassuring for an app you might keep installed for years as younger children grow into it.

A calm first art app for young children

Coloring Games does one thing and does it without asking anything of you: it gives small children a set of coloring and drawing activities that are free, ad-free and purchase-free. The five modes cover a useful range, from tap-to-fill pages for the youngest users to color-by-numbers and neon drawing for kids who want a bit more control.

I would recommend it to parents, grandparents and caregivers of toddlers and preschoolers who want a creative activity on a phone or tablet without ads interrupting or purchase prompts appearing. The 4.4 average across more than 118,000 ratings suggests plenty of families have reached the same conclusion.

If your children are past the preschool years, or if you need an art app with more advanced tools, this will feel limited. For the audience it was built for, though, it is a straightforward, no-strings option that is easy to justify installing.