OUR FAVORITES
Celebrate Black Culture
These apps honor the rich history and diverse work of Black creators, actors, game developers, and community builders.
Stream the best of Black culture
The Criterion Channel is streaming groundbreaking works like Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, the first wide-release film directed by an African American woman; Paris Is Burning, a landmark documentary about New York City’s drag ball scene in the 1980s; and Cheryl Dunye’s 1996 romantic comedy The Watermelon Woman, which explores the history of Black and queer women in Hollywood.
Two to watch in the App Store Award–winning app MUBI: Medicine for Melancholy, the debut feature from Moonlight director Barry Jenkins, and MLK/FBI, a documentary that uses recently declassified documents to uncover the extent of the FBI’s surveillance of Martin Luther King Jr.
Want to dive deeper? Search Letterboxd for lists created by Maya Cade, an archivist and Library of Congress scholar working to preserve historical Black films, or check out Adam Davie’s popular Black Life on Film lists.
BET+ is the go-to app for films, original series, and classic shows starring Black actors, comedians, and personalities, including classic sitcoms like The Wayans Bros. and Tyler Perry’s body of work.
Find your rhythm
Catch up with mixtapes from up-and-coming Black artists in SoundCloud’s Hustle: Rap & Hip-Hop playlists.
Vibe to established hitmakers on Apple Music or in the YouTube Music app, both of which have special playlists for the month.
Want to try your hand at spinning up a mix of your own? Use techniques pioneered by the Black founders of hip-hop with the Apple Design Award–winning djay, which lets you sync and loop tracks, scratch virtually, and more.
Get in the game
You’re a man who knows too much in Aerial_Knight’s Never Yield. Race through futuristic Detroit in this high-voltage twist on infinite runners, vaulting through windows, jumping over cars, and sliding beneath heavily armed drones.
Serve up classic Nigerian dishes, like jollof rice and puff puff, to an endless stream of hungry customers in the delightful cooking game Disney Iwájú: Rising Chef.
In the App Store Award–winning adventure Dot’s Home, you’ll open a time-traveling portal in your grandmother’s world—and learn about the history of housing injustice in the process.
Understand Black history
To better understand the past and contextualize the future, dive into the bite-size lessons in Kinfolk, Rebel Girls, or Khan Academy.
Have more time? Listen to 1619, a five-part audio series from The New York Times that traces the roots of American slavery and explores its impact on society and culture.
The Audible app is home to memoirs, thrillers, and more from Black authors. You’ll find highlights on the app’s Discover tab under Editors’ Picks.
Tap into the power of community
Find and support minority-owned restaurants in all major U.S. cities with EatOkra. Search by name, location, or type of cuisine.
Built for Black communities around the world, the social network Spill puts a bold, visual spin on online conversation. Each post beautifully blends a few words with a single image, GIF, or video.
Host to hundreds of dynamic discussions among avid book lovers, Fable gives readers a space to discuss works by Black authors.
Built by and for queer people, Lex isn’t your typical social networking platform. The app’s Black Queer Group is one of many safe spaces for members of the community to connect.
Make space for yourself
With more than 250 video and audio programs led by Black coaches, therapists, psychologists, and mindfulness experts, Alkeme (pronounced “alchemy”) provides culturally relevant wellness and mental health tools for the Black community.
The design-forward mindfulness studio Open taps a range of modalities to help you find calm, build rituals, and grow in your self-care practices.
Headspace’s Cultivating Black Joy collection is packed with meditations for allyship and self-care. Strengthen your feeling of empowerment with “Permission To Take Up Space,” or better understand your emotions with “Honoring Our Experience” by racial-justice educator and author Rachel Ricketts.
In the wellness app Calm, explore series by clinical psychologist Dr. Rheeda Walker or meditation teachers Kaira Jewel Lingo and Lama Rod Owens. Or drift off with the Sleep Story “The Waters of Senegal,” narrated by Timothy Alexander White.