AI finds its way into Apple’s top apps of the year

Apple connected Thursday shared its yearly database of App Store Award winners, continuing its contented of celebrating the champion apps and games of the past year.

For 2025, the winning iPhone app was ocular planner Tiimo, and the iPhone crippled of the twelvemonth was the paper crippled Pokémon TCG Pocket.

Although Apple has continued to avoid naming a dedicated AI app oregon AI chatbot arsenic its app of the year, AI was showcased among this year’s winners.

Apple’s app of the year, Tiimo, for instance, is described arsenic a ocular AI planner that turns to-dos into plans with ocular timelines. The app uses AI to interruption down your tasks into a realistic docket by estimating however agelong each measurement of a task could instrumentality and helping you to make a plan.

Meanwhile, the iPad app of the year, Detail, simplifies video editing with an “Auto Edit” AI diagnostic that handles things similar soundlessness removal, zoom cuts, and adding titles and captions.

A Cultural Impact winner, StoryGraph, uses a instrumentality learning AI to marque publication recommendations based connected your speechmaking data, portion another, Be My Eyes, offers an AI adjunct that provides ocular descriptions of real-world images for unsighted and low-vision users.

And the Apple Watch app of the year, Strava, includes an AI adjunct that turns workout information into insights.

The institution besides announced winners for the iPad, Mac, Vision Pro, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and a standout wrong its ain crippled subscription service, Apple Arcade.

Plus, Apple gave a fistful of apps a “Cultural Impact” award. These apps, the institution said, offered adjuvant tools, promoted understanding, oregon shaped a much inclusive world.

Apple archetypal named 45 apps and games arsenic finalists for its awards successful November, and the database has present been narrowed down to 17 apps and games. The winners include:

• iPhone App of the Year: Tiimo
• iPhone Game of the Year: Pokémon TCG Pocket
• iPad App of the Year: Detail
• iPad Game of the Year: DREDGE
• Mac App of the Year: Essayist
• Mac Game of the Year: Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition
• Apple Arcade Game of the Year: WHAT THE CLASH?
• Apple Vision Pro App of the Year: Explore POV
• Apple Vision Pro Game of the Year: Porta Nubi
• Apple Watch App of the Year: Strava
• Apple TV App of the Year: HBO Max
• Cultural Impact Winners: narrative-driven puzzle crippled Chants of Sennaar; a adjuvant instrumentality for the unsighted and others with debased imaginativeness called Be My Eyes; Hank Green’s distraction blocker Focus Friend, (also Google Play’s app of the year); relaxing puzzles app Art of Fauna; “slice of life” shot crippled despelote; and speechmaking tracker and publication recommendations app StoryGraph