Our 2025 iPhone App of the Year, Tiimo, reminds us that in the new year, being productive doesn’t have to involve panic. By turning chaotic calendars into a timeline of soothing colors, the app does the unthinkable: It makes tackling to-dos a calming activity.

With thousands of templates and unlimited ways to customize them, Canva makes the new year look a little more like the new you. Refresh your résumé, elevate your social posts, polish your presentations, and design the 2026 you want to see.

Heading into the new year hoping to meet new friends or someone special? Bumble remains one of the safest, easiest ways to connect—whether you’re looking for romance, friendship, or professional networking.

Our 2023 iPhone App of the Year, AllTrails, offers crowdsourced guides, offline maps, and new tools like Custom Routes and Outdoor Lens to help you navigate a path forward in the new year, whether you’re setting out on a kid-friendly hike or going backpacking in the wilderness.

Looking to improve your memory, communicate more clearly, and think quicker on your feet? Elevate’s neuroscience-backed games are designed to boost all of the above.

With AI editing tools that remove photobombers, subtly retouch blemishes, and enhance the best parts of your landscape shot, Lightroom makes it easy to transform your images in seconds.

Many apps deliver soothing sounds to help you relax, focus, or sleep, but Endel goes a step further. Syncing with the Health app, Endel customizes its soundtrack to match your heart rate, the local weather, and more.

The more you practice simple, positive actions—like taking time to journal or smiling at someone who looks sad—the more the adorable bird in Finch’s menagerie will thrive. Who would’ve guessed the secret to making healthy habits stick would be an adorable virtual pet?

With PictureThis, snap a pic of a plant to see its species and common name and learn how to best care for it. The Diagnose tool provides instant health checks on your plant and alerts you if it detects invasive species.

In addition to thousands of recipes from Cook’s Illustrated and the venerable America’s Test Kitchen TV show, this app also includes classes taught by respected chefs. Share your skill level and follow along as a teacher walks you through everything from dicing an onion to preparing the perfect omelette.

Even if you’ve only got two dumbbells and a dream, Ladder makes reaching your strength goals an easy lift. The app is stacked with encouraging coaches, nutrition tracking, satisfying haptics, and seamless Apple Watch integration.

Powerhouse note-taking app Goodnotes can clean up and summarize your writing, even if you scribbled everything by hand. It recently added helpful AI tools and an endless whiteboard for brainstorming.

This movie-focused social app is more than a robust database. Rate, review, and track what you watch to create your own film diary. Not sure what to put on? Browse curated lists that range from the super-specific (“Official Top 250 Narrative Feature Films”) to the unabashedly subjective (“You’re not the same person once the film has finished”).

From the irreverent minds behind CollegeHumor, the Dropout app streams loads of exclusive videos that’ll leave you in stitches. Start with the improv gameshow parody Game Changer and the pop-culture-infused trivia competition Um, Actually.

This might be the year you record your album thanks to BandLab, where millions of musicians create, collaborate, and discover new sounds. When writer’s block hits, AI tools like SongStarter can inspire new ideas and get you going.

This air-travel concierge monitors departure and arrival times, nudges you when you should head to the airport, tells you all about the plane you’re on, and shows you exactly where you are on the runway.

AI chatbot Claude by Anthropic has stood out in a crowded landscape for its advanced reasoning capabilities and ace coding skills. (Try asking it to build you a custom app to keep up with your New Year’s resolutions.)

Break a sweat and share the proof in Strava. Tally all your trail runs, pickleball matches, kitesurfing lessons, neighborhood strolls, and more while tapping into a community of athletes that keeps you accountable all year long.

Sometimes the tiniest habits are the most important—and the easiest to neglect. GO Club’s gorgeous interface and regular reminders to walk and stay hydrated make sticking to a healthier routine manageable.

Speechify is an incredibly human-sounding AI reading assistant that helps you learn more in less time. Snap a photo of your textbook to listen while you commute, turn blog posts into audio, and plow through work emails, which are much more entertaining in the (fully licensed) voice of Snoop Dogg or Gwyneth Paltrow.

Good Inside distills the guidance of parenting-advice juggernaut Dr. Becky into snack-size solutions that busy parents can absorb in their “free time” (aka while doing laundry or brewing coffee).

Prioritize your sleep with Sleep Cycle, an innovative alarm clock that estimates when it thinks you’re in your lightest phase of sleep and rouses you at just the right time.

With elegant graphs and an interface that’s a joy to use, Copilot helps you visualize exactly where your money is going. Its smart algorithms, driven by machine learning, are especially adept at automatically categorizing transactions, and they’ll even spot subscriptions you may be overlooking.

MasterClass provides comprehensive lessons from some of the biggest names in business, science, sports, entertainment, the arts, and more—bringing the titans of your chosen industry (or hobby) to you.

Partiful brings a lighthearted touch to party planning. This Gen Z favorite handles the tedious work of sending text blasts, tracking attendance, and sharing pics from your soirée.

Moment Pro Camera II is for photographers who want to make their own artistic choices. With manual control over exposure, shutter speed, white balance, processing styles, and even support for custom filters, it lets you shape every image with intention.