2023 winners and finalists
The Apple Design Awards honor excellence in innovation, ingenuity, and technical achievement in app and game design.
Inclusivity Winners
Winners in this category provide a great experience for all by supporting people from a diversity of backgrounds, abilities, and languages.
APP
Universe — Website Builder
Universe Exploration Company
Universe - Website Builder champions the idea of making website building accessible to everyone. With its innovative block-centric design system and support for creating websites on all Apple platforms, the app empowers people to create their perfect online storefront, artist home, community group page, personal web presence, and anything in between. The app has integrated many of Apple’s accessibility features, including a fantastic implementation of Dynamic Type and VoiceOver, and supports building websites in more than 17 languages. By consistently reducing complexity and removing barriers to entry, Universe - Website Builder enables people to create their own space on the web through inclusive, thoughtful design.
Available on iPhone, iPad, and Mac
GAME
stitch.
Lykke Studios
The warm and approachable stitch. is more than a casual game — it’s a relaxing exercise with cross-generational appeal. A puzzle game, relaxation technique, and afternoon craft project in one, stitch. encourages players to proceed at their own pace with lovingly crafted puzzles, soothing music, and a gentle vibe. And with its fun onboarding, support for multiple languages, and custom accessibility options for those with color blindness, low vision, and motion sensitivities, it’s designed for as many people as possible.
Available on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV
Finalists
Delight and Fun Winners
Winners in this category provide memorable, engaging, and satisfying experiences that are enhanced by Apple technologies.
APP
Duolingo
Duolingo, Inc.
As anyone who’s crossed paths with Duolingo’s endearingly tenacious mascot can attest, delight and fun have always been central to the app’s success. This past year, the Duolingo team embarked on a comprehensive redesign of both interface and content, making it even easier and more enjoyable to start learning a new language. Quests, challenges, and leaderboards help gamify an already fantastic experience, and a consistent stream of app updates and new language programs — including courses for endangered and indigenous languages — help keep people engaged, exploring, and committed to their learning streak.
Available on iPhone and iPad
GAME
Afterplace
Evan Kice
A vintage pixel adventure with a contemporary twist, Evan Kice’s Afterplace is a warm and welcoming RPG set in a fabulously expansive open world. A beautifully crafted environment greets players at every turn, balancing winks to the past with a wry, modern personality. Afterplace’s dark forest is a place of adventure, full of quirky mysteries, hidden rewards, and sarcastic vending machines — yet it’s designed to be accessible. The game’s clever onboarding grounds players in the world, and its intuitive one-handed control system makes it easy and fun to discover Afterplace’s many surprises.
Available on iPhone and iPad
Finalists
Interaction Winners
Winners in this category deliver intuitive interfaces and effortless controls that are perfectly tailored to their platform.
APP
Flighty
Flighty LLC
Flighty is a beautifully designed flight tracker, travel planner, airport navigator, and concierge. And with incredible Live Activities and Dynamic Island integration, it’s a friendly companion for every leg of your journey. With key information where you need it most, an intuitive interface, comprehensive live maps, and a look that mirrors time-honored airport design conventions, Flighty might be the easiest part of your whole trip. It’s an incredible example of thorough and thoughtful use of Apple technologies, with best-in-class support for widgets, Siri shortcuts, Apple Maps, and Calendar integration. iCloud sync means it’s available on every device in your carry-on, and you can live-share your flight path and ETA with anyone, whether they have the app installed or not.
Available on iPhone, iPad, and Mac
GAME
Railbound
Afterburn
Railbound may feel drawn and designed for kids, but this puzzler — in which you work to arrange train cars in their proper order — is for conductors of all ages. The tap-and-drag mechanic for laying track is so simple you could almost discover it by accident, and the game makes it incredibly easy to change direction, add switches, or undo your mistakes. And it’s full of clever design flourishes, like the scribbled frustration cloud that appears over a misplaced car and adorable characters that pop up along the way. With pristine animation and colorful visuals, Railbound is a polished puzzler that’s easy to pick up and difficult to put down — especially once you’re going full steam.
Available on iPhone and iPad
Finalists
Social Impact Winners
Winners in this category improve lives in a meaningful way and shine a light on crucial issues.
APP
Headspace
Headspace
Few apps have brought mindfulness to the masses more successfully than Headspace. More than a decade into its tenure, the app continues to set the standard for meditation and mental health apps through thoughtful design decisions, an incredible UI, and a recognizable, comfortable illustration style. Headspace is remarkably easy to navigate (collections are clearly labeled with understandable purposes), whether you’re looking for lengthy guided sessions or a five-minute clarity break. Wonderful Apple Watch integration brings a moment of mindfulness to your wrist at any time. And the app’s ever-growing number of diverse contributors and staff help ensure a focus on representing everyone.
Available on iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch
GAME
Endling
HandyGames
In the gorgeous side-scroller Endling, you play as a fox fighting to navigate a land charred by environmental disaster and human impact. Endling casts you as the animal lead to build an immediate sense of empathy and connection — one that only grows when you’re forced to begin defending your tiny offspring against all manner of man-made dangers. And the game’s simple controls ensure that you focus on the powerful storyline rather than the interactions. Endling isn’t always an easy story to experience, but its mix of medium and message has never felt more timely.
Available on iPhone and iPad
Finalists
Visuals and Graphics Winners
Winners in this category feature stunning imagery, skillfully drawn interfaces, and high-quality animations that lend to a distinctive and cohesive theme.
APP
Any Distance
Any Distance Inc.
Any Distance is a design-forward fitness tracker that delivers workout stats in a variety of eye-popping and easily shareable formats: dynamic charts and graphs, rotating 3D maps complete with elevation reports, even AR. Any Distance takes full advantage of Live Activities and Apple Watch integration to collect and present data, which can include traditional workouts like running and cycling, as well as wheelchair exercise, stroller runs and walks, and recumbent bike rides. And its in-app collectibles provide a fun incentive to go that extra mile. Any Distance raises the bar for the fitness-tracking genre.
Available on iPhone and Apple Watch
GAME
Resident Evil Village
CAPCOM Co., Ltd.
Resident Evil Village is an absolute powerhouse and the new standard of Mac gaming. This horror adventure takes full advantage of the combined powers of Apple silicon, ProMotion, and Metal 3 to serve up all the character, lighting, and motion achievements that fans of the series could hope for. From its creepy castle to its decrepit factories to its magnificently hideous villains, Resident Evil Village offers some of the most realistic graphics ever seen on Apple devices. (Players can enable the MetalFX upscaling feature to make being hunted by monsters extra terrifying.) It’s an incredible example of what Mac games can be.
Available on Mac
Finalists
Innovation Winners
Winners in this category provide a state-of-the-art experience through novel use of Apple technologies that set them apart in their genre.
APP
SwingVision: A.I. Tennis App
SwingVision Inc.
By using the combined powers of AI and Neural Engine, SwingVision serves as a tennis coach that can help with every aspect of your game. Point your camera at the court, and SwingVision’s advanced video-tracking capabilities evaluate your form, highlight your strengths, and suggest areas of improvement. Data is drawn from the camera and through best-in-class Apple Watch integration. Remarkably, all this technical achievement came from humble beginnings; SwingVision was built by two developers who taught themselves Swift.
Available on iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch
GAME
MARVEL SNAP
Second Dinner
MARVEL SNAP has it all: brisk gameplay, unbelievable artwork, and an incredible stickiness that keeps you coming back — and rewards you for doing so. But the game’s true innovation is its “snap” mechanic, which instantly doubles the stakes and introduces whole new layers of strategy and good old-fashioned psychological warfare. The game is a visual feast, awash in 3D parallax graphics, astonishing animations (just watch Hulk smash in 60 fps), and delightfully deployed haptics. True Marvel believers will be rewarded by a bottomless array of variants and deep-cut characters, while newbies will pick it up in no time at all. MARVEL SNAP is an incredible achievement that’s redefined the collectible-card-game genre.
Available on iPhone and iPad