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These Are the Year’s Best-Designed iPhone Apps, According to Apple

Apple has announced the winners for its annual Design Awards. These are the standout apps for iPhone.

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By Tucker Bowe

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Ahead of WWDC 2024, Apple has officially announced the winners for its annual Design Awards. These apps (and games) have been recognized, according to Apple, for their “innovative design, ingenuity and achievement.” 

In total, there were 42 finalists and 14 winners, who were divided into seven categories: delight and Fun, Inclusion, Innovation, Interaction, Social Impact, Visuals and Graphics, and Spatial Computing. The nominated apps and games cover the spectrum of Apple devices, from the iPhone to Apple TV and Mac to Apple Vision Pro. 

Below, we’ve rounded up some of the winners and finalists that are standout apps — not games — just for the iPhone. For the complete list of finalists for the Apple Design Awards … click here. 

Winner: Bears Gratitude

  • Category: Delight and Fun
  • Type of app: Journaling app
  • Devices: iPhone, iPad and Mac

Apple’s reason for selection: “Journaling apps just don’t get much cuter than Bears Gratitude, a warm and welcoming way to establish — and, just as crucially, maintain — a daily gratitude practice. And with its thoughtfully considered touchpoints, Bears Gratitude is a simple way to encourage and embrace honest self-reflection.”

Winner: Rooms

  • Category: Delight and Fun
  • Type of app: 3D interior decorating app
  • Devices: iPhone and iPad

Apple’s reason for selection: “Part blank canvas, part game, part 8-bit throwback, all imagination. Rooms is a collection of user-generated 3D spaces and a creative tapestry of quirky games, tranquil havens, and clever themes. Its best feature is its community element: You’re exploring real creations by real people.”

Winner: Oko

  • Category: Inclusivity
  • Type of app: Navigation and safety app
  • Devices: iPhone

Apple’s reason for selection: “oko alerts pedestrians to the state of lighted signals through haptic and audio feedback, an immediately impactful approach for those with low to no vision. It’s a smart solution to a critical safety scenario that takes full advantage of flawless VoiceOver and Dynamic Type implementation.”

Winner: Crouton

  • Category: Interaction 
  • Type of app: Grocery and recipe app
  • Devices: iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro

Apple’s reason for selection: “Recipe apps rise and fall on their organization and information hierarchy, and Crouton serves up a clean, tasty interface for stashing away recipes, creating grocery lists, and presenting step-by-step instructions in the kitchen — even if you’re not exactly a chef. Everything in Crouton, from the next recipe step to the name of that missing spice, is easy to find and right where you need it.”

Winner: Gentler Streak Fitness Tracker

  • Category: Social Impact 
  • Type of app: Fitness app
  • Devices: iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch

Apple’s reason for selection: “With its thoughtful focus on both physical and mental health, Gentler Streak is chasing the elusive goal of improving everyone’s lifestyles, no matter who or where they are. As its name suggests, the app is powered not by insistent reminders but an optimistic and encouraging vibe that takes into account not just physical fitness but mental well-being too.”

Winner: djay

  • Category: Spatial Computing
  • Type of app: DJing and music app
  • Devices: iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro

Apple’s reason for selection: “djay pro isn’t just a groundbreaking app; it’s an entirely new way to interact with music. With incredible technical ingenuity and best-in-class immersion, it feels fresh and new and alive. The app spins up high-quality turntables that you can scratch to your heart’s content, a cool interactive effects panel, and an array of magnificently considered environments.”

Finalist: Tiimo

  • Category: Inclusivity
  • Type of app: Calendar app
  • Devices: iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch

Apple’s reason for selection: “A thoughtfully considered calendar app for the neurodivergent community. The app takes tremendous advantage of accessibility features and its Live Activities bring the content to a person’s Lock Screen. Intelligently conceived, sharply executed.”

Finalist: Dudel Draw

  • Category: Delight and Fun
  • Type of app: Drawing app
  • Devices: iPhone and iPad

Apple’s reason for selection: “A delightful drawing app for artists of all skill levels. Dudel Draw presents a series of fun drawing prompts that make it feel more like a party activity than an art class. Simple to pick up and hard to put down, Dudel Draw is the definition of a small, simple app that brings big smiles.”

Finalist: Copilot Money

  • Category: Innovation
  • Type of app: Budget tracking app
  • Devices: iPhone and Mac

Apple’s reason for selection: “With an approachable interface and high-quality animations, Copilot Money makes financial tracking just about as approachable as financial tracking can be. The native Swift app uses machine learning to automatically categorize budgets, investments, and spending data, and presents it in colorful, elegant, easy-to-parse charts.”

Finalist: SmartGym

  • Category: Innovation
  • Type of app: Fitness and personal training app
  • Devices: iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac and Apple Vision Pro

Apple’s reason for selection: “SmartGym is a personal ML-powered trainer on your wrist, a friendly companion that impressively adapts to your skill set, goals, and performance on the fly. The app’s Smart Trainer feature constantly adjusts its workout suggestions, adjusting weights, recalibrating reps, and offering up recommendations from the app’s library of more than 620 exercises.”

Finalist: Arc Search

  • Category: Interaction 
  • Type of app: AI-enabled internet browser
  • Devices: iPhone

Apple’s reason for selection: “It’s not easy to come up with a new approach to the humble internet search, but the fresh and effective Arc Search provides smart, concise results summaries that have been smartly powered by AI. The app’s information is nicely designed, easy to parse, powerfully researched, and creatively delivered — and all with a focus on privacy.”

Finalist: How We Feel

  • Category: Social Impact 
  • Type of app: Journaling app
  • Devices: iPhone

Apple’s reason for selection: “How We Feel is out to help people better understand and manage their emotions by identifying the specific factors that spark them. That’s a lofty goal, and the app approaches it with a thoughtful design based on a “feelings grid” of four colors, with gradients for the level of intensity of each.”

Finalist: Ahead: Emotions Coach

  • Category: Social Impact 
  • Type of app: Emotional management app
  • Devices: iPhone

Apple’s reason for selection: “An app experience that feels like an ongoing conversation between person and coach. Each interaction in the expertly designed Ahead: Emotions Coach contributes to a sense of rapport.”

Finalist: Sky Guide

  • Category: Spatial Computing
  • Type of app: Stargazing app
  • Devices: iPhone, iPad and Apple Vision Pro

Apple’s reason for selection: “Sky Guide is a magical means for space exploration, with its immersive graphics, subtly soaring sounds, and near-constant moments of wonder. Inspecting celestial objects is a simple matter of looking up at the heavens, where people can drink in a palette of gorgeous illustrations, astrological animations, and custom interactions, like the ability to pull a constellation down from the sky.”

Finalist: Sunlitt

  • Category: Visuals and Graphics
  • Type of app: Solar tracking app
  • Devices: iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch

Apple’s reason for selection: “Sunlitt shines as an elegant way to track the sun’s position and movement, anywhere and at any time. Its visuals are certainly a bright spot, but the app’s power lies in data — sun position and path, a 3D sundial, solar event times, and more — all of which can arrive via widgets, Live Activities, and the Dynamic Island.

Finalist: Meditate

  • Category: Visuals and Graphics
  • Type of app: Meditation app
  • Devices: iPhone and Apple Watch

Apple’s reason for selection “From an indie developer in India comes this clever meditation timer and tracker, in which successfully completing meditation sessions creates a mandala that’s been beautifully rendered in SwiftUI. Meditate shines on iPhone — where you can keep tabs through Standby mode on your nightstand or Lock Screen widgets — and as an independent Apple Watch app.”

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