For almost as long as there’s been an App Store, Apple has published a list of the year’s best apps. Once iPhone-centric, it has expanded to cover the iPad, Apple TV, Apple Watch, and Mac, and now spans everything from purely practical wares to games and streaming entertainment. Apple’s 2020 list—which it’s unveiling today—includes 15 honorees. Some are natural picks: Zoom, for example, is the iPad app of the year. Others you might not know about yet. (Or at least I didn’t.) The company says that it considers technical innovation, user experience, design, and cultural impact—and that this year, it gravitated toward candidates that helped us get through all the disruptions that have made 2020 a challenge, even for those of us who have been pretty lucky, all things considered. The list, in its entirety: iPhone App of the Year: Wakeout (Andres Canella, U.S.) iPhone Game of the Year: Genshin Impact (miHoYo, China) iPad App of the Year: Zoom (Zoom, U.S.) iPad Game of the Year: Legends of Runeterra (Riot Games, U.S.) Mac App of the Year: Fantastical (Flexibits, U.S.) Mac Game of the Year: Disco Elysium (ZA/UM, U.K./Estonia) Apple TV App of the Year: Disney+ (Disney, U.S.) Apple TV Game of the Year: Dandara Trials of Fear (Raw Fury, Sweden) Apple Watch App of the Year: Endel (Endel, Germany) Apple Arcade Game of the Year: Sneaky Sasquatch (RAC7, Canada) App Trend of the Year: Shine for helping users practice self-care (Shine, U.S.) App Trend of the Year: Explain Everything Whiteboard for helping bring remote classrooms to life (Explain Everything, Poland) App Trend of the Year: Caribu for connecting families to loved ones (Caribu, U.S.) App Trend of the Year: Pokémon Go for reinventing the way we play (Niantic, U.S.) App Trend of the Year: ShareTheMeal for helping users make a difference (United Nations, Germany) When I chatted with a few of the winning developers earlier this week, the most striking thing I learned was that 2020’s major news stories—the world-changing stuff not obviously related to the app business—had an impact on all of their businesses, each in a different way.
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These are Apple’s best apps of the year—for a year like no other