Apple announces Best of 2020 apps and most downloaded apps: home workout app Wakeout! won App of the Year for iPhone, Zoom for iPad, Disney+ for Apple TV
TechCrunchSarah Perez
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple's Best of 2020 list is the latest installment of an annual ritual that stretches back at least to Periscope topping the 2015 iPhone list alongside HBO Now on Apple TV — a curated snapshot of how people actually used their devices that year. The 2020 edition reads as a direct record of the pandemic: a home workout app (Wakeout!) taking the iPhone crown, Zoom on iPad, and Disney+ on Apple TV, each mapping to lockdown-era routines of exercising at home, working and schooling remotely, and streaming instead of going out.
What makes this year's list analytically interesting is that two of the three winners are incumbents of an extraordinary sort — Zoom and Disney+ were among the most downloaded apps of 2020, so Apple's editorial picks ratified usage patterns rather than surfacing discoveries. That tension between curation and raw download charts recurs in every subsequent edition.
First-order effects
Wakeout! gets the App Store's biggest free marketing boost — an indie fitness app suddenly featured across Apple's storefronts, while Zoom's iPad win formalizes its status as the default remote-work tool of 2020.
Disney+'s Apple TV win reinforces the streaming bundle strategy Apple showcases on its TV platform, giving the service a marquee placement heading into the holiday season.
Second-order effects
Rival home-fitness and wellness apps now compete against an Apple-anointed winner for the same stay-at-home audience, pushing them toward differentiation or App Store feature pitches of their own.
For developers watching the list, the signal is that Apple rewards apps aligned with platform-level behavior shifts — encouraging studios to chase whatever the next mass habit change is rather than niche polish.
Third-order effects
The awards have hardened into an annual Apple editorial institution whose winners track each era's defining app category — live video in 2015, pandemic utilities in 2020, and by Tiimo's 2025 win, apps with AI integrations — making the list a running index of the App Store's center of gravity.
Because winners are chosen by Apple's editors rather than download charts alone, the list doubles as a soft steering mechanism for the developer ecosystem, distinct from the raw popularity signal seen when ChatGPT became 2025's most downloaded free app.
The trend: Apple's yearly App Store awards have evolved from a curated year-end roundup into a recurring barometer of which app categories define each era, from pandemic utilities to AI-native apps.
In a year unlike any other, developers have amazed us with new ways to keep us connected, entertained, active and healthy. Congratulations to the incredible app and game creators behind the @AppStore Best of 2020! https://www.apple.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@reckless Laughing at all the replies that keep swearing up and down that Zoom doesn't work in split screen with the camera because the iPad “isn't a real computer”... https://twitter.com/...
@reckless Literally on my list of “Why I stopped trying with the iPad Pro”. I guess it is “app of the year” the way Trump was “man of the year” in 2016.
@capturedecran Yeah, these awards are not the most used or most popular. Apple's own apps would probably win in that case. Instead, these are apps that either showcase the App Store / Apple's ecosystem well OR play in fields / sectors that have promise.
Congrats to the winners of this year's App of the Year! Cool to see that Apple picked another unique indie app for the iPhone App of the Year. ... and sad that this year, they're giving out beautiful diamond chamfered aluminum awards and we didn't get one last year 😭 https://twit…
@reckless I give @zoom_us a bit of a pass for struggling to keep up with their software improvements while simultaneously rewriting their ToS, adding enterprise-level security, onboarding millions of new users, and lighting up dozens of data centers in the middle of a global pand…
Does this page really not link to any of the winners? I'm supposed to just type the names into AppStore search I guess? Does anyone at Apple use the web for anything other than benchmarking ARM processors? https://www.apple.com/...
the Zoom iPad app is so much worse than the desktop app !! my iPad was my only webcam for much of the pandemic. I had to rely on the barebones iPad app for so long. It takes forever just to leave a meeting as your giant finger closes in on the screen looking for the exit button h…
(Zoom on the iPad is not resizable and does not support multitasking so it turns your camera off if you switch to another app and is overall Exhibit A in The iPad Is Not A Real Computer)
Endel keeps making history! First to bring real-time soundscape generation to your wrist, and now first ever to receive the Apple Watch App of the Year award. https://www.apple.com/... @AppStore #bestof2020