Why my favorite iPhone apps of 2025 belong on your Home Screen too

2025 was a pretty notable year in terms of the apps I used on my iPhone. Whether it was a new discovery that changed the way I worked or an old favorite that just kept working, iOS apps have helped improve my life in many ways. I hope you have experienced something similar.

Here, I highlight these apps and explain why I chose them as my top picks over the past 12 months. Perhaps they could help you in the same way throughout 2026.

AI: ChatGPT

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has changed the world in incredible ways, with ChatGPT undoubtedly leading the way. While Apple Intelligence struggled and floundered, OpenAI’s model continued to grow stronger, and its ChatGPT app for iOS demonstrated how an AI app should work on iOS.

I’ve found that ChatGPT is most useful when used in a targeted way or when you’re looking for a specific solution. Asking him vague and general questions is a good thing, but not knowing where his real strength lies. No, ChatGPT was incredibly valuable to me in 2025 when I used it to find information that traditional methods simply couldn’t locate.

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For example, ChatGPT has come time and time again with Microsoft Excel, among others. I use Excel most of the time and often want to get a specific result using a formula, but don’t know how to structure the formula I need. But if I try to find the answer using Google, I get nowhere; the search engine is absolutely useless for understanding what I want. Ask ChatGPT, however, and the correct answer will be instantly written in seconds. Better yet, I can ask him to adjust the formula, and he will fine-tune his solution, ready to use. This is a glaring example of the shortcomings of modern search engines compared to AI.

ChatGPT has helped me in countless other ways, big and small, where I’ve gotten frustrated after searching forums or trying Google. If these methods don’t get you anywhere, try ChatGPT. Just be sure to double-check the solution elsewhere, as OpenAI’s chatbot is still capable of strange hallucinations.

Reading: Matter

The most common way I use my iPhone is to read content online. Sometimes that means endlessly scrolling through Reddit, while other times it means saving posts for later. Pocket was my go-to app for reading later, but when Mozilla shut it down, I looked for alternatives.

The app I settled on was Matter. Like Pocket, Matter makes saving articles across the web incredibly easy with its share sheet integration, web browser extension, and more. It’s even set up to import your saves from other like-minded apps in just a few clicks, which made switching from Pocket totally simple.

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It’s packed with handy extras, like a tool that will transcribe your podcasts so you can read (with a built-in AirPods gesture to highlight paragraphs), or a discovery feed of recent articles you might like. It looks great and is widely customizable, and it can speak your articles out loud in a natural, convincing AI voice if you don’t feel like reading. It accelerated my learning this year and filled a pocket-shaped hole in my digital life.

Meditation: Down Dog

Self-improvement and self-understanding are trendy ideas these days, but you don’t need to look for a fad to improve your life – try the ancient practice of meditation instead. This can allow you to feel calmer and have greater insight into yourself and your weaknesses, and there’s no better app I’ve found to help you do this than Down Dog’s Meditation.

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While many alternatives give you a preset meditation program that you must follow to the letter, Down Dog takes the opposite approach by making almost everything customizable. You can change the subject of the meditation, the background music, the theme of the session, whether it is guided or not. If so, you can change the voice of the person leading the practice. Best of all, all voices are recorded by real people without any trace of AI.

Its wide range of settings allows me to fine-tune each meditation session to my liking. However, I feel like every day I know I will get something valuable out of the app because it adapts to me, not the other way around.

Schedule: Fantastic

Apple’s Calendar was my favorite scheduling app for years, even though it was largely a rash choice. He was right there, ready to go. When I did I started thinking about it, I realized I could do so much better.

Enter Fantastic. Long a favorite of Apple fans, this app adds a host of features that Apple’s default app lacks, from a variety of views and customization options to natural language typing and quick weather indicators for each day. You can set your daily availability and allow people to make appointments with you too.

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I’m someone who regularly switches between the Apple ecosystem and my Windows PC, so Apple Calendar has never been the ideal app for me because it doesn’t exist on Microsoft’s operating system. Fantastical, however, has a Windows app, finally allowing me to switch across all my devices. It has never been easier for me to organize my day and stick to my schedule.

Podcasts: Covered

I listen to a lot of podcasts, so it’s important that the app I use is up to par. The choice I settled on is Overcast, and it checks all the boxes for the type of platform I’m looking for.

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Spend a little time with it, and it becomes clear that this is an app made by someone who cares about podcasts. There’s a huge range of smart little keys and adjustable features that can make the app your own: you can change the distance the Back and Forward buttons travel, for example, or activate the Smart Speed ​​feature to reduce moments of silence without affecting sound quality.

Everything is wrapped in a clear and intuitive interface, pleasant to look at (in light and dark modes) and with many options and editable elements. This makes it pleasant to use and simple for everyone to use.

Travel: hopper

There’s nothing like booking a foreign holiday to have something to look forward to, but getting there can be an exercise in frustration. That’s why I started using Hopper, and it helped make the process much smoother.

Hopper can do a lot of things: offer deals on hotels, for example, or give you a place to find a rental car. That’s all well and good, but it makes perfect sense when it comes to booking a flight. This is the feature of the app that I used the most.

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Search for a flight and Hopper presents a color-coded calendar showing the best (i.e. cheapest) days to book a flight. It’s often the difference between getting a good deal and spending a few hundred dollars more than necessary. Hopper combines this with price predictions, so if it’s not the right time to pull the trigger, it will let you know. If you’re not quite ready to book, you can also pay a little to freeze the price and protect against it rising. I’ve never needed this feature, but it’s nice to know it exists.

Now I never check flight prices without going through Hopper first. It’s a handy weapon in your arsenal if you love traveling and hate paying too much.

Sports organization: Spond

I’m a football fanatic: I love watching it, but most of all I love playing it. But trying to get everyone organized before practice or a game sucks when you’re trying to do it through messages or email.

Instead, I ditched those methods and switched to the Spond app this year, and it has made a world of difference. This app aims to help people manage sports groups and ensure everyone shows up week after week. Club members can indicate whether they will play each match and pay for their subscriptions via their phone, while organizers can set the location and remind people to RSVP if they haven’t already. There’s also handy contextual information, such as directions to the pitch and weather forecasts for kick-off time.

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Now I no longer worry about random communications and chaotic game days. Instead, I manage everything in one place on my iPhone. I can’t say it made me play It’s better, but I’m working on it.