Apple shared its annual list of App Store Award winners on Thursday, continuing its tradition of celebrating the best apps and games from the past year. For 2025, the winning iPhone app was the visual planner Tiimo, and the iPhone game of the year was the card game Pokémon TCG Pocket.
While Apple has continued to avoid naming a dedicated AI app or AI chatbot as its outright app of the year, artificial intelligence was prominently featured among this year’s winners. The iPhone app of the year, Tiimo, is described as a visual AI planner that transforms to-do lists into plans with visual timelines. It uses AI to break down tasks into a realistic schedule by estimating how long each step might take.
The iPad app of the year, Detail, simplifies video editing with an “Auto Edit” AI feature that handles tasks like silence removal, zoom cuts, and adding titles and captions. Among the Cultural Impact winners, StoryGraph uses machine learning AI to provide book recommendations based on your reading history. Another Cultural Impact winner, Be My Eyes, offers an AI assistant that delivers visual descriptions of real-world images for blind and low-vision users. The Apple Watch app of the year, Strava, includes an AI assistant that turns workout data into personalized insights.
The company also announced winners for the Mac, Vision Pro, Apple TV, and a standout title within its Apple Arcade subscription service. Additionally, Apple presented a handful of apps with a “Cultural Impact” award, noting these apps provide helpful tools, promote understanding, or help shape a more inclusive world.
Apple first named 45 apps and games as finalists for these awards in November, and the list has now been narrowed down to 17 winners. The full list of winners includes Tiimo for iPhone App of the Year and Pokémon TCG Pocket for iPhone Game of the Year. The iPad App of the Year is Detail, and the iPad Game of the Year is DREDGE. The Mac App of the Year is Essayist, while the Mac Game of the Year is Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition.
The Apple Arcade Game of the Year is WHAT THE CLASH?. For Apple Vision Pro, the App of the Year is Explore POV and the Game of the Year is Porta Nubi. The Apple Watch App of the Year is Strava, and the Apple TV App of the Year is HBO Max.
The Cultural Impact winners are the narrative-driven puzzle game Chants of Sennaar, the visual assistance tool Be My Eyes, Hank Green’s distraction blocker Focus Friend, the relaxing puzzles app Art of Fauna, the “slice of life” soccer game despelote, and the reading tracker and book recommendation app StoryGraph.