Apple’s editorial team has dropped its shortlist for the 2025 App Store Awards, and it reads like a yearbook for what people actually used, loved, and — importantly — what pushed platform boundaries. The company says it has recognized a curated group of 45 finalists across its major platforms, from iPhone and iPad to Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, Apple Arcade and the still-new Apple Vision Pro ecosystem.

Carson Oliver, who runs App Store Worldwide for Apple, framed the list as a celebration of craft and usefulness: the finalists were chosen for sparking creativity, simplifying daily workflows and delivering gameplay that felt fresh. It’s a reminder that Apple’s awards are as much about editorial taste as they are about downloads or revenue.

The finalists include a mix of indie standouts, polished productivity tools and AAA games that pushed technical limits on Apple hardware. A few highlights that capture the range:

• iPhone App of the Year: BandLab, LADDER, Tiimo — a music creation/social tool, a fitness planner, and an AI-forward organizer: the shortlist shows Apple rewarding both creative tooling and day-to-day utility.
• iPhone Game of the Year: Capybara Go!, Pokémon TCG Pocket, Thronefall — card games, cozy indie mechanics and strategy titles all making room in Apple’s game spotlight.
• iPad and Mac lists feature apps like Detail (AI-assisted video editing), Graintouch (digital art with a tactile feel), Acorn (photo editing) and Essayist (writing tools) — an emphasis on creative and productivity workflows that feel at home on big screens.
• Games: the Mac and Apple Arcade shortlists include heavyweight console-style experiences (Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition) alongside inventive indie projects (Neva, Katamari Damacy Rolling LIVE), which shows Apple rewarding both scale and originality.
• Apple Vision Pro categories are present again this year (apps like Camo Studio, D-Day: The Camera Soldier and games such as Porta Nubi), underlining Apple’s push to cultivate the spatial computing app ecosystem.
• Cultural Impact: a dozen finalists here — including Be My Eyes, Venba, StoryGraph and others — are singled out not for flashy mechanics but for measurable social or cultural reach. Apple explicitly calls out apps that foster understanding, build community, or open new ways to interact with culture.

Why these lists matter more than a simple “best of” label

Apple’s App Store Awards are editorial: the winners and finalists aren’t chosen by raw download counts or in-app revenue alone. Instead, the App Store team weighs design elegance, technical innovation (how an app uses Apple hardware and system APIs), and impact — whether an app changed the way people create, work, connect or play on their devices. That helps explain why you’ll often see small, clever apps beside multi-studio blockbusters: the judges are looking for distinct value, not just scale.

There’s also a platform message in the picks. The inclusion of Vision Pro categories again signals Apple wants to show that spatial apps are maturing; Apple Arcade and Apple TV nods highlight cross-platform entertainment; and the Cultural Impact finalists demonstrate that Apple is still keen to surface software with societal resonance. In short, these awards are editorial taste-making that doubles as a signal to developers about what Apple values.

A small note on numbers

Apple’s press release says 45 finalists across 12 categories, while Apple’s developer pages list a slightly different total in some regions or pages; this kind of counting quirk crops up occasionally when regional App Store stories or editorial features publish slightly different lists. The safest single source for the company’s announcement is its official newsroom post.