Another year almost over, another round of Apple awards for the apps that most impressed Apple itself in 2025. The awards are chosen for apps on Apple’s official App Store, and Apple employees make the decisions, so it feels a bit like parents picking their own favorite children.
Some I’ve never heard of. Others, like HBO Max and Pokémon TCG Pocket, were pretty obvious picks. Anyway, let’s talk about it.
Apple’s Picks for the 17 Best Apps of 2025
“The winning apps and games were hand-selected by App Store editors from a list of 45 finalists for demonstrating exceptional innovation, user experience, and design,” Apple said in a Thursday, December 4 announcement, crediting the 17 winners for “technical ingenuity and lasting cultural impact.”
Why Apple chose 17 and not 20, I couldn’t say. It makes sense to split games into their own categories, separate from the non-gaming apps, and unlike on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Vision Pro, there’s no reason to include a category for Apple Watch or Apple TV game apps.
Apple went with six awards for cultural impact, too. Award ceremonies always seem to prefer award counts ending in 5 or 0. Good on Apple, I suppose, for bucking convention and just awarding however many they felt like.
Here’s the complete list, along with links to their pages in the App Store:
- iPhone App of the Year: Tiimo
- iPhone Game of the Year: Pokémon TCG Pocket
- Mac App of the Year: Essayist
- Mac Game of the Year: Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition
- Apple Watch App of the Year: Strava
- Apple TV App of the Year: HBO Max
- iPad App of the Year: Detail
- iPad Game of the Year: DREDGE
- Apple Vision Pro App of the Year: Explore POV
- Apple Vision Pro Game of the Year: Porta Nubi
- Apple Arcade Game of the Year: WHAT THE CLASH?
- Cultural Impact Winners: Art of Fauna, Be My Eyes, Chants of Sennaar, despelote, Focus Friend, and StoryGraph.
The post The 17 Best Apps of 2025, According to Apple appeared first on VICE.
