Apple App Store Awards 2025: AI leads but ChatGPT misses the top spot

Apple has announced the winners of the App Store Awards 2025 for iPhones, iPads, Macs, and other products. The award celebrates and recognises the best apps and games of the year that are uniquely integrated into Apple’s ecosystem. In 2025, the best iPhone app title was awarded to Tiimo, an AI-based visual planner. What comes as a surprise is that several leading AI-powered tools, such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Grok, and others, did not make it to the “best” apps despite having millions of daily users.

This showcases that Apple has avoided naming specific AI apps or AI chatbots as app of the year, while several winning apps are known for offering unique AI-powered features and capabilities. For instance, Tiimo is quite an impressive app that uses AI to convert to-dos into actionable plans with a realistic schedule. 

On the other hand, the best iPad of the year was given to an AI app named Detail, which offers AI-powered video editing tools like Auto Edit that add captions, make zoom edits, etc. Another interesting winner was Strava, which won the title of best Apple Watch app. This app uses an AI assistant that analyses workout data such as activity history, heart rate, elevation, etc, to provide personalised insights and summaries. 

Why does Apple not include AI apps like ChatGPT for App Store Awards?

As per reports, Apple recognises apps on an annual basis that are deeply integrated into Apple’s ecosystem in terms of design, features, and others. Whereas popular apps like ChatGPT and Google Gemini are built on external AI systems and large language models (LLMs). These apps consist of complex data and require constant data privacy checks. Hence, these apps are not Apple-native compared to apps which are uniquely built for the App Store.