On the 15th of this month, in preparation for the annual WWDC 2026 developer conference scheduled to kick off on June 8th, Apple announced the list of nominees for the Design Awards. Every year, these awards honor the best apps and games that combine innovation, creativity, and technical excellence within the Apple ecosystem. This year, 36 nominees across six categories are competing, and the winners will be revealed during the WWDC 2026 conference ceremonies. These apps are divided into Fun & Entertainment, Inclusivity, Innovation, Interaction, Social Impact, and Visuals & Graphics. Here are the details for each category and its apps.
Fun & Entertainment Category
This category honors apps and games that provide users with unforgettable, fun, and satisfying experiences, while creatively leveraging Apple technologies.
📱Apps
Blippo+
A Mac-only TV app that broadcasts multiple channels of shows reminiscent of the vintage television era. What makes it special is that the broadcast is synchronized among all users, so everyone sees the same content at the same time. Panic has paid great attention to every design detail, from fonts and buttons to chunky pixels, to revive the aesthetics of the early digital era.
Blippo+
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Metaballs
A mesmerizing spatial experience on the Vision Pro, allowing you to shape gelatinous bubbles and droplets in a 3D space. You can push, pull, and distort these shapes, and they interact realistically with the ambient lighting in your room. Creations can also be exported in USDZ format for use in other projects.
Grug
A simple and ingenious daily app that delivers wisdom and proverbs from a fictional caveman, with funny sentences. It features a fully hand-drawn design, with a custom status bar and a charmingly childish aesthetic. No cloud, no login, just simple daily wisdom.
🎮 Games
PowerWash Simulator
The ultimate relaxation game, putting you in front of the task of cleaning all kinds of dirt with a pressure washer, with haptic feedback that varies depending on the nozzle. However, the story takes an exciting turn into time travel, mysterious cat gatherings, and ancient temples.
Is This Seat Taken
A clever puzzle game with a cartoon style, revolving around placing people in their favorite seats on buses and in restaurants according to their quirky personalities. It features fun details and surprising reactions when touching elements in the scene, with hidden Easter eggs in the interface, all without time pressure.
Is This Seat Taken?
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Ball x Pit
An action-packed RPG based on a simple concept: throwing super-powered balls at swarms of enemies, turning it into a joyful and satisfying classic arcade experience. Its retro visuals and chaotic collision movements shine remarkably on iPhones and iPads that support HDR technology.
Inclusivity Category
This category celebrates apps that provide an exceptional experience for everyone, reflecting a diversity of backgrounds, abilities, and languages.
📱Apps
Hearing Buddy
Developed by a solo developer who is hearing impaired, which gives it real depth and empathy. It relies on Foundation Models and on-device speech-to-text technology to generate instant subtitles and summaries for daily conversations, while maintaining complete privacy of voice data. The app is available for Watch, iPhone, and iPad.
Hearing Buddy - Speech To Text
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Structured
A daily planner built with SwiftUI, allowing for easy time management and finding breaks. It is widely praised by the neurodivergent community for its clear design and use of Foundation Models to suggest and automatically populate tasks, making personal organization less overwhelming. The app is available for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
Structured: Daily Planner Todo
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🎮 Games
Sago Mini Jinja’s Garden
A play world designed with great care for young children, enabling them to play soccer, chase a mouse, and try on colorful hats. It requires no reading-based interaction and integrates inclusivity features so naturally that parents might not even notice them at all.
Pine Hearts
An emotionally moving adventure in a warm natural world. The hero, Tyke, returns to a nature reserve to evoke the memory of his late father, progressing on his journey with the help of others. The game displays inclusivity options before starting: improving text clarity, customizing controls, and adjusting sensory response.
Pine Hearts
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Civilization VII
The latest installment in the legendary strategy series, offering more inclusive cultural and civilizational representation than ever before. It highlights leaders and civilizations rarely mentioned in mainstream games, such as human rights activist Harriet Tubman and Indian freedom fighter Lakshmi Bai, in a more respectful vision of comprehensive human history.
Innovation Category
This category honors apps and games that use Apple technologies in truly innovative ways that set them apart in their category.
📱 Apps
Detail: AI Video Editor
Combines the ease of a camera app with the power of an AI-powered video editor. It automatically identifies “magic moments,” removes silences, and edits a video from multiple angles in one take. Perfect for podcasters and digital content creators who want professional editing with minimal effort.
Detail: AI Video Editor
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NBA: Live Games & Scores
Allows fans to follow five NBA games simultaneously on Apple Vision Pro. Thanks to a partnership with Spectrum, some Los Angeles Lakers games are now available in Apple Immersive Video with spatial audio, making the viewer feel as if they are right behind the basket line.
NBA: Live Games & Scores
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D-Day: The Camera Soldier
A moving interactive document that tells the story of a war photographer who participated in the Normandy landings through the eyes of his daughter, who knew nothing about her father’s experiences. It uses a mix of immersive video, spatial audio, and interactive activities to open a powerful window into history and family bonds.
🎮 Games
TR-49
A suspenseful puzzle that poses a fictional question: What if World War II code-breaking computers kept running non-stop? It brings you a production from the team behind the 2022 winner, Overboard!, with non-linear storytelling and wonderful vintage puzzles. It is also nominated in the Interaction category for its exceptional sound design.
Blue Prince
An exceptional adventure that blends exploration, puzzle-solving, and storytelling into something unique. Your mission: find a secret room inside a vast mansion. The surprise: you build the mansion from scratch, room by room. The story unfolds everywhere, from pictures hanging on the walls to handwritten notes.
Pickle Pro
Considered one of the most exciting authentic gaming experiences on visionOS, it is essentially a fantastic pickleball game. Every hit feels natural and precise, and thanks to integration with SharePlay Personas, you can challenge friends online with custom dimensions and appearances.
Pickle Pro
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Category Four: Interaction
This category honors apps that provide intuitive interfaces and smooth controls, perfectly tailored to the platform they run on.
📱 Apps
The Outsiders: Athlete Tracker
From the developers of Gentler Streak comes this thoughtful fitness app. It features a Training Readiness Score, a beautiful visual representation that displays training load alongside sleep quality, resting heart rate, and other metrics to help athletes know how ready they are to train.
The Outsiders: Athlete Tracker
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Moonlitt: Moon Phase Tracker
An elegant app for tracking moon phases, its path, and more, coming from the developers of Sunlitt, a 2024 award nominee. It offers wonderful visual simplicity for sky watching, with an ascending display of astronomical data and AR tools to pinpoint moon locations.
Moonlitt: Moon Phase Tracker
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Tide Guide: Charts & Tables
The most elegant tide tracker in the App Store. Its full-screen charts present massive amounts of weather and sea data in a clean and understandable way. Best of all, its color palette changes automatically to reflect the color of the sky throughout the day.
Tide Guide: Charts & Tables
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🎮 Games
TR-49
TR-49 is nominated again in this category thanks to its exceptional sound design. As players examine an antique machine for clues, they discover rare audio files, and a narrator interacts vocally with every discovery, creating a truly compelling world.
Sago Mini Jinja’s Garden
Also nominated for its exceptional interaction. It is a lesson in intuitive interaction design for children aged 3 to 6: no reading, no complexity, just natural dragging and touching gestures that allow for planting seeds, cooking meals, and harvesting vegetables with pure joy.
Grand Mountain Adventure 2
A perfect example of touch control design in games. The gestures are smooth, easy to learn, and the response is immediate. It takes you to a beautifully crafted fantasy winter world of ski resorts, forests, and wild trails, with striking visual aesthetics.
Grand Mountain Adventure 2
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Category Five: Social Impact
This category honors apps that tangibly improve lives and highlight important issues.
📱 Apps
Primary: News in Depth
Founded by a former Associated Press journalist, it works with a team of editors and specialized contributors around the world. This news platform on Vision Pro features a spatial way of viewing news and pivotal issues, away from sensationalism and clickbait headlines.
Primary: News in Depth
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Katha Room
An Indian sleep story app that carries a deep cultural heritage, sharing tales inspired by Indian folklore, adorned with images influenced by traditional Indian Gond art with its intricate patterns and vibrant colors. It honors cultural diversity and revives ancient oral traditions.
Katha Room - Kids audio tales
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Harvee
Converts Apple Watch data—heart rate variability, resting heart rate, sleep statistics, and activity levels—into actionable therapeutic recommendations. Because the recommendations work via on-device AI models, sensitive health data remains fully protected.
Harvee: Watch Stress Monitor
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🎮 Games
Consume Me
A personal and deep life simulation that carefully addresses the emotional reality of eating disorders. It intelligently and simply tackles topics of mental health, body image, and self-esteem through mini-games about daily tasks like exercise and applying makeup.
Despelote
Set in 2001, when Ecuador was on the verge of qualifying for its first World Cup in history. The story is told through the eyes of 8-year-old Julian, describing how sports can unite an entire culture. Its visual style is a unique blend of line drawings and street photography with double-color effects.
despelote
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Spilled!
A warm and relaxing cleaning game about restoring the health of polluted rivers and lakes, created by a solo developer who lives on a boat and is passionate about environmental issues. In each stage, you restore oil-polluted water to crystal clarity, while rescuing cute-looking pixel-art creatures.
Spilled!
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🎨 Category Six: Visuals & Graphics
This category honors apps that shine in imagery, skillfully drawn interfaces, and high-quality animations with a consistent and distinctive character.
Tide Guide: Charts & Tables
Appears again in the Visuals category because its full-screen charts and displays of marine data—from water temperature and wave height to hour-by-hour forecasts—are presented with rare visual clarity. Its color palette changes with the colors of the sky, making usage a truly aesthetic experience.
Tide Guide: Charts & Tables
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Caradise
A stunning spatial car museum that lets you open doors, explore seats, and hear the roar of engines in 3D spatial audio. Created by a solo developer, Peder Sandqvist, including ambient light reflections on the metal roof. An incredible experience from one person.
(Not Boring) Camera
A retrospective photography app that brings back the atmosphere of 70s and 80s cameras, with large buttons and tactile scrolling wheels that make adjusting focus and fine-tuning settings a fun experience. Easy to use for beginners, yet it supports SuperRAW and professional filters for advanced photographers.
(Not Boring) Camera
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🎮 Games
Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition
A futuristic world with precise details, from the intricate interior design of buildings to the imaginative vehicle designs and the striking, bold character styles. The “For This Mac” setting automatically adjusts frame rate and image quality according to the device’s capabilities.
Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate
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Arknights: Endfield
An innovative RPG that pushes the boundaries of what is possible on iPhone and iPad, with stunning visual art, 3D battles, and vast environments. The blend of team-based action and factory building offers endless fun for strategy and building fans alike.
Arknights: Endfield
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SILT
A monochrome visual experience that is both gloomy and enchanting. It pushes the player into a strange and unsettling underwater world. Don’t miss the camera work that adapts intelligently: it zooms in to follow you in narrow tunnels, then zooms out to reveal the size of a massive, earthquake-like sea snake head.
SILT
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Winners will be announced during WWDC 2026 from June 8 to June 12, 2026. Winners will receive a physical award and Apple hardware to help them continue their creations.
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