Apple names the best designed apps of 2025 - did your favorite make the list?

Sabrina Ortiz/ZDNET

Days ahead of this year's WWDC event, Apple has announced a series of awards naming the best-designed apps for 2025. Covering both games and regular apps, the Apple Design Awards highlight the most innovative and ingenious programs ranked highest by Apple for their technical achievement.

The awards cover iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, Apple TV, and Apple Vision Pro apps. The winners encompass six different categories: Delight and Fun, Inclusivity, Innovation, Interaction, Social Impact, Visuals and Graphics. For each category, Apple chose one winner and two finalists for the top apps and one winner and two finalists for the top games.

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Delight and Fun

Delight and Fun refers to apps that offer memorable, engaging, and satisfying experiences. The apps in this category are:

• CapWords (Winner) -- CapWords helps you learn the name of a thing by taking a picture of it.
• Lumy -- Finalist Lumy tracks the sun and the moon to help you photograph them.
• Denim - Playlist Cover Maker -- This finalist can create new cover art for your playlists.

The three chosen games in this category are:

• Balatro (Winner) -- Balatro combines poker and solitaire with deck-building and chaos.
• Thank Goodness You're Here! -- This finalist is described as a "wildly unhinged slap-happy pie-obsessed flower-punching cartoon musical comedy game."
• Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown -- This take on the familiar Prince of Persia game places you in combat against time-corrupted enemies and mythological creatures.

Inclusivity

The Inclusivity category reflects a variety of backgrounds, abilities, and languages. Here, the apps and games singled out are:

• Speechify (Winner) -- This app turns any written text into audio.
• Evolve: Daily Self-Care Coach – Focusing on the LGBTQ+ community, this finalist provides breathing exercises, affirmations, and daily journaling.
• Train Fitness -- This one logs workouts by tracking the motion of your Apple Watch and AirPods.

The three chosen games in this category are:  

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• Art of Fauna (Winner) -- This game prioritizes inclusivity and ecology with its wildlife puzzles.
• Puffies -- With this finalist, you assemble puzzles made of 1980s-era puffy stickers.
• Land of Livia -- In this one, you fight oversized rodents, recruit companions, discover magical swords, and solve text-based quests.

Innovation

The Innovation category is defined by Apple as providing state‑of‑the‑art experiences that set them apart in their genre. Here, the apps and games include:

• Play (Winner) -- Play helps you design and develop interactive prototypes that you can use to create your own apps.
• Moises -- This finalist isolates the instruments in a recorded song so you can separate each one into its own track.
• Capybara AI Meeting Translator -- This one uses AI to accurately transcribe, translate, and summarize a meeting or other discussion.

The three chosen games in this category are:    

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• PBJ - The Musical (Winner) -- PBJ - The Musical borrows from Romeo and Juliet with star-crossed condiments animated by hand through paper cutouts.
• Pawz -- This game adds virtual pets into the real world, letting you play and interact with them.
• Gears & Goo -- Designed for Apple's Vision Pro headset, this game encourages you to throw around goo but in a 3D spatial environment.

Interaction

The Interaction category awards apps that offer intuitive interfaces and effortless controls.

• Taobao (Winner) -- Designed for the Apple Vision Pro, this app helps you design and interact with 3D elements that resemble their physical counterparts.
• iA Writer -- Geared for distraction-free writing, this finalist offers such features as a customizable keyboard, selective text highlighting, and iCloud syncing.
• Mela - Recipe Manager -- Here, you can scan and manage recipes and then easily follow the steps as they're highlighted one after another.

The three chosen games in this category are:    

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• DREDGE (Winner) -- Defined as "Lovecraftian fishing," this game takes place in a maritime town where monsters lurk beneath the water.
• Gears & Goo -- Also a finalist in the Innovation category, this game is for anyone who wants to throw around goo in a 3D spatial environment via the Vision Pro.
• Skate City: New York -- In this one, you zip around the parks and sidewalks of New York City on virtual skateboards.

Social Impact

The Social Impact category highlights apps designed to improve our lives and spotlight crucial issues.

• Watch Duty: Wildfire Maps (Winner) -- Run by volunteers, this app aims to help people affected by wildfires through updates, sources, and real-time guidance.
• Ground News -- This one offers you news coverage from thousands of publications, accompanied by graphs that determine the political slant of an article or outlet.
• Opal --This one uses widgets and shortcuts to help you spend less time on your mobile device.

The three chosen games in this category are:    

• Neva (Winner) -- Designed for the Mac, this game in this category follows a girl and her wolf as they travel through a decaying world, facing challenges but also strengthening their relationship.
• Ahoy! From Picardy -- Developed for the Vision Pro, this game lets you interact with the 3D environment through a character named Picardy, who's trying to make up for past mistakes.
• Art of Fauna -- Also the winner in the Inclusivity category, this one offers a series of classic wildlife puzzles.

Visuals and Graphics

Finally, the Visuals and Graphics category praises apps known for their stunning images, well-designed interfaces, and high-quality animation.

• Feather: Draw in 3D (Winner) -- This modeling tool lets artists turn their 2D designs into 3D creations.
• Vocabulary - Learn words daily -- This one uses a cleanly designed interface and style to help you learn new words each day.
• CellWalk -- Designed for the Vision Pro, this app lets you explore a 300 million-atom 3D cell.

The three chosen games in this category are:    

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• Infinity Nikki (Winner) -- Highlighted by Apple as one of the best-looking games of the year, Infinity Nikki challenges you to collect clothes instead of weapons.
• Control Ultimate Edition -- In this game for the Mac, you travel through twisting hallways, cityscapes, and creepy stone-white heads.
• Neva -- A winner in the Social Impact category, this game follows the adventures of a girl and her wolf as they travel through a decaying world.

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