Apple Recognizes 2025 App Design Award Winners
Credit: Apple
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Just like last year, Apple has decided to change things up a bit and announce the 2025 App Design Award winners ahead of the WWDC25 kick-off on June 9. Prior to 2024, Apple announced the winners following the WWDC keynote. While the timing of the public announcement has stayed mostly the same from last year, Apple has curiously dropped one of the seven award categories from last year, officially recognizing only six for 2025.
2025 Apple Design Award Categories
Last year, Apple added a new Spatial Computing category highlighting apps explicitly developed for the Vision Pro. Last year’s winner was algoriddim’s djay pro, a DJ software app that now has 23,000 ratings on the App Store and 4.8 out of 5 stars.
We recently reported on how many early Vision Pro customers were feeling some buyer’s remorse given the steep cost, weight, and look of the device. While we’re not completely counting out the Vision Pro, Apple dropping the Spatial Computing award category is a clear indication of the lack of current Vision Pro buzz. Nevertheless, a couple of Vision Pro apps still found their way to the podium.
Here are the 2025 categories:
- Delight and Fun: Winners and finalists in this category provide memorable, engaging, and satisfying experiences enhanced by Apple technologies.
- Inclusivity: Winners and finalists in this category provide a great experience for all by reflecting a variety of backgrounds, abilities, and languages.
- Innovation: Winners and finalists in this category provide a state?of?the?art experience through novel use of Apple technologies that set them apart in their genre.
- Interaction: Winners and finalists in this category deliver intuitive interfaces and effortless controls that are perfectly tailored to their platform.
- Social Impact: Winners and finalists in this category improve lives in a meaningful way and shine a light on crucial issues.
- Visuals and Graphics: Winners and finalists in this category feature stunning imagery, skillfully drawn interfaces, and high-quality animations with a distinctive and cohesive theme.
The winner of the Delight and Fun category is the AI language learning app, CapWords. CapWords is suitable for users ages four and up. The concept is super simple. Snap a picture of something around you and get its name and a sentence in up to 10 different languages. CapWords currently supports learning in English, Chinese, Spanish, French, Japanese, Korean, German, Italian, Russian, and Portuguese.
The winning game is Balatro, a “precisely calibrated mix of poker, solitaire, deck-building, and chaos.” Finalists include the sun tracker app, Lumy (last year’s winner), Denim (playlist cover maker), Thank Goodness You’re Here!, and Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown.
The top spot in the Inclusivity category goes to Speechify. Speechify is touted as, “…more than a great appt, it’s a critical resource that helps people live their lives.” Speechify transforms any written text (websites, docs, PDFs, and more) into audio with hundreds of different voices in over 50 available languages. It’s ideal for anyone, including professionals, students, auditory learners, and people with low vision.
The winning game is Art of Fauna, a wildlife puzzle app in which puzzles are solved by rearranging the image on the front of the cards or re-ordering the text on the back. Proceeds from every purchase are used to support wildlife conservation. Finalists in the category are the daily self-care coach, Evolve, Train Fitness, puffies. and Land of Livia.
Play helps designers create interactive prototypes and is the 2025 Design Award winner in the Innovation category. Apple highlights its sophisticated capabilities while being approachable at the same time, “making design and development easier for everyone.”
PBJ – The Musical takes home the award for the most innovative game. It’s “somewhere between narrative and game” and tells the story of star-crossed condiments. The other finalists in the category are Moises, which isolates instruments in a recorded song using machine learning, CapyBara AI Meeting Translator, Paws, and Gears & Goo.
A Vision Pro app first makes its way onto the list in the Interaction category. While Apple’s description of the Interaction category winner, Taobao, is vague, it’s actually an immersive shopping experience powered by 3D and mixed-reality technology. It allows consumers to test drive cars or redecorate rooms, all with the touch of a finger in the comforts of home. Taobao was created by Alibaba Group.
The winning game is DREDGE, described as a “slow-paced horror adventure set in a maritime town where dark and large secrets lurk below the surface.” Sounds terrifying! Interaction category finalists are iA Writer, Mela – Recipe Manager, Gears & Goo (again), and Skate City: New York.
Watch Duty: Wildfire Maps is a volunteer-run operation that provides essential and often life-saving information on wildfires, making it 2025’s Social Impact category winner. It was the primary source of fire data when wildfires raged in Southern California in January of this year.
The winning Social Impact game is Neva: ” A powerful, sometimes somber, and richly illustrated story about the emotional effects of environmental decline…follows a girl and her wolf as they make their way through a decaying world, using the changing of the seasons to illustrate not just challenges of their reality but the evolution of their relationship.” Social Impact finalists are Ground News, Opal (an app encouraging less time on devices), Ahoy! From Picardy, and Art of Fauna.
Finally, the winner in the Visuals and Graphics category is an iPad-only app, Feather: Draw in 3D. Feather allows artists to transform 2D designs into immersive 3D. The app “makes full use of touch and Apple Pencil interactions.”
Infinity Nikki is the winning Visuals and Graphics game. Apple unsurprisingly refers to it as “one of the best-looking games of the year.” In Infinity Nikki, players are challenged to collect clothes instead of weapons, and it is “an often literally glowing example of what mobile graphics can be.” Category finalists include Vocabulary – Learn words daily, CellWalk (another Vision Pro app), Control Ultimate Edition , and Neva.
Apple’s Design Awards are a great starting point for those of us who don’t often explore the App Store but instead rely on Apple’s native apps or other major media apps like Spotify, YouTube, and Netflix. We encourage you to go out on a limb and unleash the full potential of your Apple device by checking out some new apps. You may just stumble upon a new favorite! Congrats and thank you to all the winners and finalists!
