These are Apple’s top apps of the year

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Apple handed out its annual App Store Awards on Thursday, and as usual, the tech giant made it feel like the Oscars.

This year’s iPhone App of the Year crown went to Tiimo, a visual planner that turns your chaotic mental list of “I’ll get to it eventually” into clean timelines and achievable plans. 

The twist? Tiimo quietly uses AI to figure out how long tasks will actually take, meaning your dream of cleaning the whole house in 10 minutes is now officially canceled.

For gaming, Pokémon TCG Pocket snagged iPhone Game of the Year, proving we as a society are still absolutely fine collecting digital monsters like it’s 1999.

Though Apple once again avoided crowning a full-on AI chatbot as App of the Year (because… vibes?), AI still stole plenty of the spotlight. 

Detail, the iPad App of the Year, uses AI to slice silence out of your videos, auto-zoom, and add captions, perfect for aspiring content creators and people who simply cannot stand the sound of themselves pausing.

Across platforms, AI kept sneaking in. Reading recommendation app StoryGraph uses machine learning to analyze your reading habits. 

Be My Eyes offers real-time AI descriptions of the world for blind and low-vision users, one of the clearest examples of AI doing genuinely good things instead of helping someone write twelve breakup texts.

Apple also highlighted apps it says made a “Cultural Impact,” meaning they didn’t just sit on your phone, they maybe made you a better human. 

Winners included the cozy title Art of Fauna, the narrative-puzzle Chants of Sennaar, and, yes, Hank Green’s Focus Friend, an app designed to keep you from wandering the internet like a procrastination cryptid.

After narrowing 45 finalists down to 17 winners, Apple wrapped up the ceremony by honoring everything from HBO Max (Apple TV App of the Year) to Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition on Mac, because apparently someone, somewhere, is playing it on a Mac.

Here’s the list of winners:

• 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 
  
• Apple Watch App of the Year: Strava 
  
• Apple TV App of the Year: HBO Max
  
• 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

While AI didn’t win the top trophy, it definitely stole the show.