Apple Announces 2025 App Store Awards Winners: Timo, Pokémon TCG Pocket, and More

Apple has officially unveiled the winners of its 2025 App Store Awards, honouring 17 apps and games for technical innovation and cultural relevance. The list of winners is a clear signal of the two biggest trends driving Apple’s platform: the aggressive integration of AI into daily tasks, along with the maturing visionOS ecosystem.

Apps of the Year

If you’re wondering what’s driving innovation, the answer is efficiency powered by AI. Across the core productivity categories, the winning apps are fundamentally designed to automate and simplify complex tasks:

iPhone App of the Year: Tiimo. This visual planner won for seamlessly incorporating AI to turn vague personal goals into actionable, next-step tasks.

iPad App of the Year: Detail. Leveraging the powerful iPad chipset, this app democratizes video production with advanced AI editing tools for creators of all levels.

Mac App of the Year: Essayist. Tackling the mundane time-sink of academic formatting, this app uses AI to manage citations and structure, freeing up students and writers.

Meanwhile, the new hardware category saw its first major winner: Explore POV took the Apple Vision Pro App of the Year award for whisking users to stunning locations using the headset’s Apple Immersive Video format.

Other device winners included Strava for Apple Watch App of the Year, noted for its sleek design and community integration, and HBO Max for Apple TV App of the Year for enhancing inclusivity with American Sign Language additions.

Gaming

The gaming winners were a mix of AAA console heavy hitters and mobile adaptations:

Mac Game of the Year went to the highly predictable but technically impressive port of Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition, highlighting Apple’s push for console-quality gaming on its silicon.

iPhone Game of the Year was awarded to Pokémon TCG Pocket, an evolution of the card battles designed perfectly for a quick, iPhone-friendly interface.

iPad Game of the Year went to DREDGE, a fishing game that mixes cozy gameplay with a haunting mystery, making it the perfect immersive title for the tablet.

Porta Nubi won the Apple Vision Pro Game of the Year for its atmospheric puzzle design that transforms the player’s real-world environment. Finally, the wonderfully silly WHAT THE CLASH? from Triband ApS took the Apple Arcade Game of the Year trophy.

Cultural Impact Winners

App Store editors reserved six additional awards for Cultural Impact Winners, these are apps and games recognized for actively driving positive change and promoting inclusivity.

This group included powerful utility tools such as Be My Eyes, which connects AI and millions of global volunteers to assist users who are blind or have low vision, and StoryGraph, an inclusive platform rooted in authenticity for the book community that helps elevate diverse authors.

Other notable Cultural Impact winners were Chants of Sennaar, an adventure celebrating the power of language, and Focus Friend by Hank Green, which gamifies focus sessions to combat digital distraction.