Basically, when your drawing mode is set to "color" then images will import in colour, using the nearest colour in the palette. If the drawing mode is set to black and white (which is the default) images import in black and white, dithered. Often the best results however for colour image importing is using an external tool to dither to the desired palette before importing. The "All About Color" deck has a lot of details about how this works and what you can do with it! https://beyondloom.com/decker/color.html
In terms of iPad OS, I don't think there's a version of Decker that runs natively for it - the builds on the itch page are targeted towards desktop Windows and MacOS (or Linux users can build from source). If you're using an iPad or an Android tablet then you are basically stuck with the web app. The web and native versions are pretty much feature-identical for what it's worth.