How To Keep Using Pages, Numbers and Keynote If You Don't Want Apple Creator Studio

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Here's what to do if you don't want the Apple Creator Studio subscription but you still want to keep using Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. 

So let's say you've determined that the Apple Creator Studio subscription isn't for you. You don't use Final Cut Pro, Logic, or Pixelmator Pro but you do use Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. There are some new things for those and access to things like Content Hub but if you feel you don't need those things you can continue using those three apps. You can use them completely free just as you have been for years. But now there are two versions of each one of those apps. Which one should you get and what else should you do if you don't plan on having a subscription?

When you go to the App Store and you search for Pages, Numbers, or Keynote you'll come up with the new versions of them. You'll see the new icons for each here. You won't find the old versions. But if you were to download any of those you would notice that your old versions still remain on your Mac. They are separate apps. Here you can see in the Dock I've got two versions of Pages, two versions of Numbers, and two versions of Keynote. If I look in my Applications Folder I can see the two versions there. If I check this one, the old version of Pages, you can see under Name & Extension in the Info Window it's called Pages.App. But if I check this one and bring up the Info Window you can see it's called Pages Creator Studio.App. But the shortening for both is just Pages. So I've got both apps there. Which one should I use?

They do look a little different. For instance here is the old version of Pages. You can see the style of the Toolbar and the Sidebar there. Here's the new version of Pages. You can see how the Toolbar and Sidebar look different. Here they are side-by-side. So you can compare them. The functionality is the same. But you have the newer look present in macOS Tahoe with the newer version of Pages and the older look from macOS Sequoia with the older version of Pages. The newer one is Pages 15.1. The older one is Pages 14.5. 

Now if you're not going to have a subscription to Apple Creator Studio then right now as of February 2026 they both are identical in features.  They just have different looks to them. One notable difference though is when you go to choose a Template. You can see the old 14.5 version just gives you templates here. You just see all the basic templates and that's it. But in 15.1 there are two differences. One is you have got more templates. All of the new ones are listed under Premium here, or interspersed throughout all the different categories. You can tell which ones are new because they've got the little symbol here at the top right whereas the ones that were previously available don't have that symbol. But all the non-premium templates are the same between the two versions. It's only with the new version that you get the new templates and that's only if you've got a subscription. So in other words you have the same templates with no subscription no matter which version you use. 

But if you're using the new version 15.1 and select All Templates then at the top you get this promotion for Apple Creator Studio. You don't have to click on it or use it for anything. You can just scroll past it. But I know some people will be annoyed by that. The same is true if you look at Numbers 14.5 using the old Sequoia style elements and you don't see a promotion. Then if you look at 15.1 you'll see the same thing here with the promotion at the top of All Templates but then if you look through the templates you'll see ones without the symbol at the top right. Those are available in both versions and you'll see ones with the symbol available at the top right showing that they are Premium ones that you need the subscription for. 

It is the same with Keynote as well. If you don't have a subscription then the newer version gives you a Promo for the premium templates and the premium templates are visible even though you can't use them. So if you don't plan on getting Apple Creator Studio subscription what should you do? Should you just stick with the older apps or should you get the newer apps. I think you should get the newer apps! With the newer apps at least you get the newer look and it certainly appears like those will be the ones that will be updated in the future. We don't know if we will actually get any new features but there may be some bugs fixes, some performance enhancements, and maybe some minor things that are added at some point. But also you get a unified look between those apps and any other apps you may be using on your Mac. 

So if you do that, if you get the new apps, should you Delete the old apps? The notifications that you see on the screen seems to suggest that you should. But you don't have to and there's no rush to do so. You can just leave the old Pages, Numbers, and Keynote apps there on your Mac and don't use them. I suppose one reason to keep them there is maybe some document you'll open in the new app doesn't look quite right or has some sort of issue you can always go back to open it in the old app. I haven't run across or heard about anything like that, but I suppose it's possible. With no real good reason to delete the olds apps right now I would just keep them around for awhile.  

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Now if you don't plan to get the subscription another thing you may want to do is get rid of some of the buttons here in the Toolbar. If you look at the buttons that are in purple, if you click on those, those are Apple Creator Studio features like Generating Images, Upscaling, and Accessing Content Hub. You can actually take these out of the Toolbar completely if you like. Just go to View, and then scroll down to Customize Toolbar. You can also Control Click in the Toolbar and choose Customizes Toolbar. Then you can drag these down and out to get rid of them, like that. This leaves an extra spacer there, you can get rid of that. You can get rid of this one as well. I'm actually going to leave this one here and I'll show you why in a second. So you can get rid of those buttons, maybe add some other useful ones back up if you like. If you ever want to revert to the default set just drag the default set, like that, back up to the top. So now you've gotten those useless buttons out of the way. 

The reason I didn't get rid of Content Hub like this is because while I can't use any of the Photos, the Graphics, or the Backgrounds because those are all part of Apple Creator Studio, I can use the Shapes. In fact Apple has placed all of the shapes from the previous version under this. So if you want to, for instance, use one of these shapes here, like animals, or symbols, or different things, then you would need that button to get to it. But you can still get rid of this because the shapes button here, while giving you access to your most recently used shapes, you can see one of them here, also the textbox and line and all of that, you've got Browse Content Hub at the bottom here. So, getting rid of this one still allows you to have access to the shapes by clicking there. In fact, using this button takes you directly to the Shapes section there. So you don't have to be bothered to see all the other things that you can't use. 

You can do the same thing for the other apps. So, for instance, Keynote has got a bunch of different buttons up here for Generate Slides from Text, Generate Presenter Notes, Automatically Fix Styling & Formatting, and then the AI Image Generations up here. Content Hub and there's the Increased Resolution. If I customize the Toolbar I can get rid of all of those by dragging them out like that. Get rid of this extra spacer as well. Now I don't have any of those features in the Toolbar. 

The same thing here for Numbers. You can customize the Toolbar here. Get rid of these extra elements, like that. You can still access the Shapes by clicking Shapes and Browse Content Hub. All the shapes are available without a subscription. 

But what about all the extra templates and the Promo for Templates. If I go to File, New is there anyway to get rid of this. Unfortunately right now there isn't. Hopefully Apple will add something in the future like they've done for the Music App. So, it won't bother you with it. But for now we're stuck with it when you look at the screen. But you don't always have to look at the screen. You can change things. In Pages, Settings under General there is a setting here for New Documents, Show the Template Chooser, or Use a Specific Template. You can select  the template you want. So if you always find that you're using the Blank Template or maybe one of the other templates, or maybe one that you have created, then you can choose that. It sets it up like this and now when you create a New Document with File, New it just creates a new document using that template. 

For most Pages users this is exactly what you want anyway. You're probably always starting with the same template. I know for me I'm always starting with this blank template here. If you do want to use one of the templates you can still go to File, and then New, but hold the Option Key down and that changes to New From Template Chooser. Option Command N. That will take you back here where you will see the Promo, but only at a point where you're looking for a specific template. The same is true for the other apps. In Keynote, under Settings, you can change to Show Theme Chooser or Use Theme. Here in Numbers as well. Under Numbers, Settings you've got  Use Template. Select the template right there. 

Now Numbers actually has one special Apple Creator Studio subscription trick that comes up in a situation like this where it can try to predict what comes in the cell here. If you double click it to type into it, it will suggest Magic Fill the whole column or just the Magic Fill Suggestion here. Technically you shouldn't be able to use this without an Apple Creator Studio subscription. But it works for the individual cell at least. But if you try to do Magic Fill Column here it will give you a preview of it and if you say, Accept, then it says that you need a subscription. If you'd rather not see this here then you can go to Numbers, Settings and you could turn Off Show Suggestions With Editing Table Cells. The only problem is you'll also miss out on other suggestions. Like, for instance, here if I were to type you can see it is suggesting from the values above that is a normal suggestion. So you'll miss out on that as well. But I find that you really need to be in a situation like this for it to even suggest Magic Fill. Even when it does you can just completely ignore it or take advantage of the fact that you can use the one-off selection right there. 

Now one reason you may need to stick with the older 14.5 version of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote is if your Mac is not able to use the 15.1 version. Now the App Store says that all you need is macOS 15.6 or newer to run it and they are universal apps so they should run on Intel Macs as well. But I suppose it could still be possible to have an older version of macOS on an older Mac that doesn't support the newer versions. If so you would find out when you try to install them from The App Store. But otherwise you should definitely get the three new apps. You should try them out and probably plan on using those without the Apple Creator Studio subscription moving forward. If you really don't like the Promo on the template screen or you don't like the fact that there are buttons in the Toolbar that don't apply to you then consider sending feedback to Apple asking them for a switch to turn those Off. 

Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.